


you are with me like a translated language (mine and yet foreign)

by viverella



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn, implied violence but nothing graphic, in a manner of speaking anyways, p much the whole troupe shows up at some point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-07-08 20:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viverella/pseuds/viverella
Summary: After a lifetime of running — from the fear of death and a world that doesn't want him and the end of all things — Phinks comes to realize that maybe, there's something to be said for running towards something, that maybe he's been headed for it this entire time. And maybe, he realizes, it's been waiting for him all along.





	1. passers-by (OR: in the beginning)

**Author's Note:**

> so apparently all I'm capable of writing these days are either weird, pointless atmospheric fics that span 2k words or rambling nonsense that reaches tens of thousands of words and I guess since I got the former out of my system re: hxh a while ago, it's time for me to spiral into the latter so uh...... sorry lmao
> 
> if you follow me on tumblr u kno that I've been spiraling into phantom troupe hell so uhhhhh here I am back on my bullshit ladies! here's this way too long fei/phinks fic that no one wanted or asked for, horrible cheesy epigraphs and all! I'm probably playing pretty fast and loose with the timeline of things in this fic but uhhh the passage of time in hxh has never made sense to me and at this point I'm afraid to ask. also like I kno there's Discourse about whether or not shal and phinks are founding members of the troupe but they are In My Heart so in this house, these are the rules. 
> 
> HERE WE GO GIRLS! 
> 
> (title borrowed from yehuda amichai. epigraphs credited in text.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a lil short and sweet something to start us off! the next two chapters will be longer! tonally, I think I actually like this chapter the best bc the rest of it kind of got away from me, but plot-wise, sit tight for the Good Stuff

_“Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”  
—Jean-Paul Sartre  
_

  
  


The first job they ever work together as partners, Feitan looks at Phinks with something like disdain or maybe just contempt at having to work alongside someone, and he says, half a threat and half a promise, “If you can’t keep up with me, I won’t wait for you.”

And Phinks laughs then, because he doesn’t know what else to do, because Feitan’s acting like he asked for any of this, even though the orders came from the top down ( _Keep an eye on him, would you, Phinks? We need our mark back here in one piece_ ). He laughs and he tries to shrug off the way that Feitan’s words always seem to cut him to the core, and he says, “Don’t worry. I’m faster than I look.”

Feitan looks at him with what Phinks has come to think of as his customary iciness (at everyone or just at him?), and Phinks wonders, not for the first time, what Feitan actually thinks of him, if this is just some kind of defensive front learned from years of neglect or if this is all there is, at the end of the day. But then the moment passes, and Feitan takes off into the night, and it’s like the whole world exhales again. 

Years later, the words will still knock around the back of Phinks’ head like so much loose change, and not always, but sometimes, if he lets it, if he stops thinking about anything else, it bubbles to the surface again. And it’s been years and years since Feitan said this, and they’ve both grown and changed in ways that can only come from the deliberate setting of one foot in front of the other, but there’s still something about the memory that always throws him off balance. Because the thing is, Phinks has always been fast, running all over the world and away from pain and death and prying eyes like he was born to do only this, impulsive and restless and impatient at having to wait for anything, but Feitan has always been faster. Sometimes, Phinks wonders if he’ll ever not feel like he’s chasing after something just out of reach. Sometimes, he wonders what stillness would feel like. 

And sometimes, in his quietest moments, which are fewer and farther between these days than they ever have been, he lets himself step into that space in his mind that he tries so hard to avoid, and he knows without knowing how or why that the reason he can never seem to find the words for the doubts he feels is that the answers he knows he’ll get are almost certainly things he doesn’t want to hear, doesn’t need to hear. Knows that somehow, the very act of asking will puncture the delicate balance he often feels like he exists in. 

_When you said that, what exactly did you mean?_ he thinks sometimes, the end of the thought always, always trailing off like mist into something he can’t quite pinpoint. He feels like he’ll spend his whole life trying to grasp some thread of it, wondering if this is the crux of everything that means anything, wondering if this is the thing he’s been running from all this time.

\---

When Phinks meets Feitan for the first time, they don’t really meet so much as Feitan blows right past him like he’ll never catch up, and in the end, years later, Phinks wonders if maybe that was a sign of everything to come. He’s still young then and rougher around the edges, and he’s nothing more than a street rat, grappling with the world every day just to eat, just to survive. He’s lonely and alone and so, so angry (at himself? At the parents who abandoned him? At the world for being so cruel? He never quite figures it out), and he picks fights with people who are bigger than him in a desperate attempt to feel anything else but the hollowness in his own chest. 

Most days, no one spares him a second glance. Even among the residents of Meteor City, he’s maybe just a little too pitiful, and everyone who passes him averts their eyes, either because there’s something too sad even here to see a kid like him with absolutely no one to call his own or because there’s something about him that broadcasts how easily he’s provoked to fight. Everyone finds their people in time, because even at the very edges of civilization, even forgotten by the rest of the world, people have a tendency to congregate around shared forsakenness, but either Phinks has run from it or else it’s run from him for almost as long as he can remember (though sometimes at the edges of his dreams, he thinks he can remember a warm smile and the feeling of being loved). After all these years beating back the threat of death that always lingers around him, he remains a solitary figure amongst the rubble. It works for him, mostly, because he doesn’t know what he’d do with that sort of attention, that sort of attentiveness, because it’s been so long that someone actually noticed him in a meaningful way that he’d probably run at the mere feeling of it. It’s probably sad, in hindsight, but at the time it feels like there’s no other way the world could possibly be. Why would the universe want to be generous to a guy like him? 

There’s a day when he’s fending off a group of guys trying to follow him back to his makeshift home (to what, rob him? He has nothing but the clothes on his back), and suddenly everything shifts about two inches to the right, not enough for him to notice right away or even pinpoint exactly what’s changed until years later, but after that, things are inexplicably, undeniably different. In between punches and the satisfying feeling of his fists crunching against flesh and bone, he notices all at once that he’s not alone. He doesn’t know why or even how he recognizes it, because it’s been years since the last time he felt this sensation, but he suddenly becomes acutely aware of a pair of eyes on him, burning a hole through the back of his head. He feels pinpricks shoot down his spine as he knocks the last of his assailants out, and he suppresses the instinct to flee under the unfamiliar scrutiny, because even then, he doesn’t think of himself as someone who runs from anything. His bloodied knuckles are proof enough of that. 

Instead, he slowly straightens up and scans the mountains of trash and debris around him, searching for whoever’s spying on him, rolling his shoulders back in an effort to look bigger than he is. For a long moment, he doesn’t spot anything out of the ordinary and wonders if maybe his paranoia is getting the better of him. He’s just about to drop his guard when he spots a small figure perched atop one of the piles of rubble just to his left. A kid who’s probably no older than Phinks himself is crouched gingerly atop the junk, narrow eyes watching everything that’s been unfolding. When he sees that he’s been spotted, he tilts his head to one side like an animal considering its prey, and Phinks feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The kid’s tiny, he thinks; he should be able to take him easily, but the rare instinct at the back of his mind warning him to be cautious makes him hesitate. 

“What the hell are you looking at?” Phinks shouts instead, proud of the way his voice booms out across the sparse landscape. It’s usually enough to make people think twice about looking at him funny, and even though something prickles at his skin telling him that this might be a bad idea (not quite fear, but something close, closer than he usually ever gets), he’s never been good at backing down so he squares his shoulders and glares defiantly back. 

The kid is very still for a moment, and Phinks almost lets himself feel a small surge of triumph, but then the kid straightens up, and even from this distance, Phinks can see something cold and almost indifferent in his eyes as he turns and hops down from his perch and out of sight. And even though normally, that kind of thing wouldn’t bother Phinks – even though normally, he’d consider that sort of thing a win – for some reason, it makes him inexplicably angry. Before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s running after the kid, itching to confront him or fight him or _something_ , even if he doesn’t quite know what. 

“Hey!” Phinks shouts as he clears the pile of debris that the kid disappeared behind. 

He’s strolling away at a leisurely pace, his hands shoved in his pockets, and there’s something about him that seems unflappable. He turns to look at Phinks and pins him with a steely stare like this is all nothing more than an inconvenience. 

_You started it_ , Phinks almost wants to say, but he thinks better of it. 

“I have no fight with you,” the boy says, his words thick with an accent that Phinks can’t place, surprisingly soft and airy next to his hard expression. 

He holds Phinks’ gaze for a long moment, as if daring him to make the first move, before turning on his heel once more and walking away. There’s something chilly and impersonal about his entire demeanor, and Phinks’ instincts tell him that if he were to run into him again, the boy wouldn’t recognize him. And the thing is, Phinks has met a lot of aloof and none too kind people who brush by him without a second thought, but there’s something that feels different about this. He’s been ignored nearly his entire life, and he’s used to having to fight to make an impression, but he’s never felt so utterly _dismissed_ before, and there’s something about that that’s worse than being invisible. 

\---

If you asked him to identify, years later, what exactly changed in that instant, Phinks probably wouldn’t be able to answer, only that it undeniably had. He doesn’t do it often, but if he really thinks about it, he doubts that he would be anywhere near the path that he’s on if it weren’t for that day. There’s something that sets up shop in his chest going forward, spite maybe, the unshakable need to prove that he’s enough, that he’s worth something, and without him realizing it, a year passes, and he’s stronger than he’s ever been. He picks up skills he never knew existed and wins fights he never knew he could win. He’s fiercer and faster and _more_ that he’s ever been, and even if he shouldn’t, even if it’s the wrong thing to put his faith in, he feels comforted by that knowledge. 

He can’t quite figure out what it is, but the feeling follows him, hot on his heels for the weeks and months and years to come. All he knows is that there’s this feeling he keeps getting that if he lets himself stop, he’ll fall behind, and he’s not even sure what he’s supposed to be keeping up with, what he’s supposed to be running from. It’s something, if he really thinks about it, that’s been there his entire life, this need to make sure he won’t get left in the dust, and in that moment, it’s like it gets dialed up to eleven. It won’t stop, and he’s not sure he even wants it to anymore, because there’s a part of him that thinks that maybe, if he didn’t have this, he’d be long dead, forgotten under all the other discarded trash in Meteor City. But sometimes, sometimes, if he really lets himself think about it, he wonders, _is this all there is for someone like me? Is there life without this constant desperation?_

At the time, it seems impossible for the world to be any other way, and even many years later, it doesn’t get any clearer, but maybe, he thinks, the answer gets just a little bit closer. 

\---

The second time Phinks meets Feitan, he knows he’ll be remembered, though it takes him a moment to recall the chilling dismissal from all those months ago. He knows he’s been _seen_. There’s something both thrilling and unsettling about the thought. 

A man with slick black hair and lofty dreams of what life could be gathers Phinks and seven others in a dusty warehouse on the edges of Meteor City. He introduces himself as Chrollo and makes them an offer.

“Work with me,” he says in a low, smooth voice, “And you will never want for anything.”

Phinks looks around at the others gathered in the room around him and wonders what the lot of them could possibly have in common, much less why they’d ever think to work as a team. Even just from the spare minutes they’ve spent together, he can tell that they couldn’t be more different from each other, save for their shared connection to Meteor City, and Phinks wonders, not for the first time, who this man really is, to think up the idea of bringing them all together. When he’d met Chrollo a week ago, he’d been intrigued enough by the vague pitch he’d been given to show up today out of sheer curiosity, but he never truly entertained the idea of joining some kind of rogue band of thieves. And looking around now, he’s more skeptical than ever that anyone, even someone as inexplicably magnetic as Chrollo, could possibly keep them together in any coherent way. 

And yet, the offer is tempting. Phinks has never really thought much about his future, was never certain enough that there was even a future to be had to plan for, and the thought of leaving behind Meteor City for the riches of the world seems like a pipe dream. He wants to say that it’s impossible, that people like them don’t get to just leave, don’t get to just live like they mean something to world, but the words get stuck in his throat. Saying it will only make it more real, and Phinks doesn’t know if he wants to admit that, now or ever. 

It ends up not mattering that he can’t find it in him to say something, because Feitan is the one who breaks the heavy, thoughtful silence in the room. His voice is quiet and calm, but Phinks thinks that if he listens carefully enough, he can hear the sharp razor edges to Feitan’s words. A spark of recognition flares in the back of Phinks’ mind, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“How do I know you won’t just kill me?” Feitan asks, his way of asking _how do I know I can trust you?_ Or maybe _who do you think you are?_ “I don’t even know you.”

Phinks can almost feel the atmosphere in the room change. He looks around at the way the others are shifting their weight, and he knows that whatever Chrollo says next will be crucial, otherwise they’ll all bolt like skittish animals, protecting the self first and worrying about the rest later, the instinct, always, for survival above everything else. 

Chrollo smiles. “If I wanted you dead, why would I go through all this trouble? There are easier ways to kill someone, and I don’t like wasting time.”

Feitan narrows his eyes, suspicious still, but doesn’t say anything else. 

“This only works if you all want to be a part of it,” Chrollo continues, and there’s something almost soothing about his voice. “You’re free to go if you want” — the unspoken _but if you do, you’ll be a liability_ hangs in the air without needing to be said — “but if you stay, I have a job for you. Call it a trial run. You can decide for yourself if you like it or not, but I guarantee there will be no better option to get yourself out of this hellhole. It’s your choice.”

In the end, they all end up staying, and in hindsight, Phinks thinks that maybe that was a lie, or at the very least a half-choice. Maybe none of them ever could’ve walked away. Maybe it was never a decision that needed to be consciously made. Give a bunch of desperate kids a way to use their various strengths and get rich in the process, and any other persuasion is secondary. 

There’s a few hours to kill before they head out, and tentatively, they all start to get to know each other. They’re all faces that Phinks thinks he vaguely recognizes, though from where, he can’t say. They’re all people living on the fringes, even by Meteor City standards; they’ve almost certainly crossed paths before, even if they never made a real impression on Phinks. There’s just one exception. 

“We’ve met, right?” he says, slinking over to Feitan, hands shoved in his pockets. “I never forget a face.” 

He doesn’t know why he does it, because he just knows without knowing how that Feitan won’t remember him, that the memory of that day isn’t nearly as significant as it is for him, but he feels that need to just do something wriggling under his skin again.

Feitan looks up at him, that same disinterested stare that makes Phinks feel suddenly very cold, and frowns, almost scowls. He hasn’t grown much since that day he watched Phinks fight, but there’s something about him that seems harsher somehow, like he could cut through stone on contact. 

“I’m not here to make friends,” he says, an undercurrent of annoyance coloring his soft voice. 

He stands from where he’s been sitting and pointedly walks away, and Phinks feels a flash of indignation well up in his chest. 

“I’m just making conversation, asshole,” he calls out, but Feitan ignores him. 

And this time, the blatant dismissal just makes him angry. 

\---

Phinks gets his tattoo etched across his chest and tries not to think too much about the placement he’s picked for it, sitting right over the space where his heart is. It’s the early days, still, and the Troupe has yet to become a household name, and the tattoo artist doesn’t bat an eye when he describes what he wants, walking out some time later with a large spider with spindly legs permanently marked into his skin. It feels like a promise, somehow, the beginning of something, like everything up until now in Phinks’ life has just been practice, and it makes him feel an odd sort of relief. If he’s number five, then he’s part of a set, and he’s never really been a part of anything before, really. 

When Phinks walks out of the tattoo parlor, he squints into the bright, late afternoon sun, the sweltering heat of the desert hitting him in a harsh wave. It’ll be dark soon, but in the meantime, the slanting rays bathe the city in a wash of warm, golden light. Like this, the city looks almost beautiful. Like this, it’s almost easy to forget that it’s little more than a junkyard held together by sheer willpower alone. But as he emerges back out onto the street, people brush by him without even really seeing him, same as always, and as he looks around, he thinks to himself that maybe this was never really home in the end. 

As he shoves his hands in his pockets and slinks off to the makeshift shack he’s been calling his these days, he suddenly feels the weight of keen eyes on him like he’s being scrutinized, but when he squints and lifts his hand to shield himself from the light glaring into his eyes, he can’t see anyone or anything out of sorts. He’s almost certain he’s being watched, but he can’t tell from where or by whom, and after a moment of scanning the horizon, he wonders if maybe it’s all in his head. Maybe this place has already begun to haunt him. Maybe this means there was always going to be a day when it would be time to leave behind the ghosts of his past. 

\---

In the winter, Pakunoda calls him up to ask for help on a job, and when he shows up at the boarded up house she told him to come to, he finds that he hasn’t arrived alone. She’s sitting, one leg crossed neatly over the other, on the armrest of an overstuffed armchair, chatting quietly with a small, dark figure and illuminated by only a few sparse candles placed around what most likely used to be someone’s living room. Phinks can’t quite see in the dark gloom of the space, but he knows without knowing how exactly who’s here, and he feels his stomach clench with something almost like nerves, suddenly wishing he’d had anything else going on when she’d called. He’s just wondering if he can maybe make a run for it before they notice he’s gotten there, but she’s already looking up and waving him in. 

“Thanks for coming,” she says, her voice low and smooth. Phinks has never seen her get riled up, not once, and part of him wonders if she has it in her, wonders if anything could disturb her calm veneer. 

Feitan’s sitting on the raised ledge in front of the fireplace, and he peers up coolly at Phinks, expression sharp and assessing. He narrows his eyes and there’s a flash of something that flits through his eyes, something spiteful maybe, something piercing like Phinks is being taken apart, bit by bit. After a moment, Feitan looks away, an almost bored look replacing the incisiveness from the moment before, and Phinks wonders if he just imagined it. Phinks shoves his hands in his pockets and shifts his weight. 

“Yeah,” he says lamely. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Pakunoda smiles a little at him, her angular features softening into something almost kind. It always surprises him, the gentleness she can summon when she wants, because he’s seen her on the job, knows that she operates with the sort of efficient ruthlessness that only comes from years of practice, knows that whatever she would’ve been if Chrollo hadn’t brought them all together, it would always have been something exceptional.

“I wouldn’t have bothered you, except I quickly realized that I’d need to be in multiple places at once,” she says, almost like an apology except that he’s never heard her apologize for anything. “And even I’m not that good.”

It’s an easy job, once she lays it out for them, no more complicated at the heart of it than a breaking and entering sort of thing, except that the place they’re stealing from has an insane amount of security, both in terms of the feet they have on the ground and the security system they’re using. She’s already done her homework, has all sorts of blueprints and schematics and information about the system this complex uses, and he can tell that it’s really just a matter of having enough bodies to deal with it all, enough people to cut through the distractions, that she even called. She’s endlessly thorough, precise almost to the point of fault, and he can’t help being impressed at everything she’s managed to collect. 

“We go in tomorrow at sundown,” Pakunoda says by way of conclusion. “So you have till then to familiarize yourselves with everything. We can go over the details again in the morning. Get some rest tonight. I need you sharp.” She waves her hand vaguely at their surroundings. “There’s plenty of room here, so make yourselves comfortable wherever.” 

She offers a small smile before ducking out for the night, the dull _clunk_ of her heels climbing the stairs before disappearing entirely, and once again, Phinks finds himself alone with Feitan and unsure of what he’s supposed to do. After all, how do you even begin to interact with someone who so clearly wants nothing to do with you? He’s suddenly hyperaware of his body, at the clunkiness of his limbs and the clamminess of his palms, and he can feel his heart pounding against his rib cage, nervous and agitated. He wants to say something, anything to break the ice between them, to feel like maybe they can at least be civil colleagues if not friends, but before he can think of anything, Feitan’s already standing and making as if to leave. 

“We’ll split up tomorrow,” Feitan says as he leaves, taking a few of the documents Pakunoda has collected with him. The way he says it makes it sound like the decision’s already been made, even though Pakunoda has admitted that as long as they can draw fire away from her for long enough for her to break through the security system, she doesn’t really care how they do it (she’s not in the business of telling other people how to do their jobs, she says. If she’d wanted that, she would’ve tried to become someone more like Chrollo). 

Phinks nods, unsure of how else he can possibly respond. It’s not like he can say they need to stick together, because he knows they can both easily hold their own, knows that Feitan knows it too, and he’s not even sure why even a tiny part of him wants to object, anyways. He’s worked alone his whole life. It’s always been better that way. 

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring how heavy the words feel in his mouth. “Yeah, sure.” 

The next morning when he wakes up, Pakunoda’s already awake, perched on the kitchen counter and scrolling through some missed messages on her phone. She’s unearthed a coffee machine from somewhere and found a way to coax it to life, and in her other hand, she’s cradling a ceramic mug, a small chip in the rim. She looks up when Phinks steps into the room and inclines her head towards the still-warm pot. 

“Morning,” she says, casual like this is some kind of regular occurrence. “Coffee?” 

Phinks nods and accepts a cup, leaning back against the counter on the opposing wall. They sit in a calm silence for a moment, but Phinks gets the distinct impression he’s being scrutinized. 

“You used to get in fights a lot as a kid, didn’t you?” Pakunoda asks apropos of nothing, right on cue, though it sounds less like a question than the vocalization of some conclusion she’s been working towards for quite some time. 

Phinks blinks and shifts his weight. “What’s it to you?” he asks, unsure of where this is all going. 

Pakunoda looks at him for a beat, thoughtful. “In my experience, there are two types of people who grow up in Meteor City,” she says. “There are those who court violence, and those who spend their days dissecting it. I like to know who I’m working with.” She pauses and smiles. “I’m right, aren’t I?” 

Phinks lets out a breath in a sharp huff. “I guess,” he says. 

There’s a knowing look in her eye, something satisfied and significant about it, and Phinks feels himself grow uncomfortable under her gaze. When she looks at anyone, he almost feels like she can see too much, and the thought of someone laying bare everything he’s got locked away inside of him is just too alarming. 

“Can I ask you something?” she asks, though he has a feeling that it won’t matter what he says. Better to just lean into it.

“Sure.”

Pakunoda’s quiet for a moment, looking up at the ceiling and gathering her thoughts. 

“I’ll admit I had ulterior motives for calling you for this job,” she says, and he wonders what direction she could possibly be going in with this. “Most of the others, I had an easy time figuring out. You can tell by the way they carry themselves. For example, on one end of the spectrum, you have someone like Uvo who obviously has never met an opportunity to fight he didn’t take. Hot-headed. On the other end, you have someone like Shal; he’s a planner. Never does anything unless he’s got the next ten steps figured out.” She turns her gaze back down to Phinks. “I’ll admit. You stumped me initially. You’ve got the impatience in you, I can tell, but there’s something holding you back.” 

“Uh,” Phinks says, completely lost and bewildered by how she could possibly know all of that about all of them. They’ve barely known each other for more than a handful of months. “Thanks?” 

She smiles, just so. “The only person I haven’t quite been able to figure out is Feitan,” she continues, and Phinks stiffens. “There’s a lot of anger in him, but he’s also one of the most self-restrained people I’ve ever met.” She looks at Phinks for a few seconds, assessing. “What’s your take?”

At that, Phinks can’t help laughing. This is _not_ the way he pictured his morning going.

“Why are you asking me?” he says, incredulous. 

Pakunoda doesn’t even bat an eye. “You worked with him that last time we were all together, didn’t you?” she says. “You’ve probably spent more time with him than any of us. You must have thoughts.”

Phinks stares at her in disbelief. “That’s one way to put it,” he says, trying to imagine what she’s thinking as she asks him all of this, because yes, they worked together, technically, but it mostly involved working _near_ each other and Phinks scrambling to keep up when Feitan darted off in some new direction. When she just keeps looking inquisitively at him, he sighs and continues, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck, “I don’t know. I mean, he’s kind of intense, I guess. Standoffish.” He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated and uncomfortable. “Look, it’s not like I really got to know him or anything, and anyways, in case you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t really like me, so I don’t know what you’re expecting to get out of this.”

A flash of understanding passes over Pakunoda’s face, like she’s finally connected all the dots, and she nods and takes a sip of her coffee. “Ah,” she says. “Interesting.”

She doesn’t say anything more, looking a little like she’s lost in her own thoughts, and Phinks lets out a long breath. 

“Care to share with the class?” he deadpans. 

Pakunoda purses her lips, thinking. After a pause, she asks finally, cryptically, “What does it mean to you to hate someone?”

Phinks blinks, thrown off balance. He clears his throat. “I don’t know,” he says, suddenly feeling entirely ill-equipped to be having this conversation this early in the morning. The caffeine hasn’t had nearly enough time to kick in. “Animosity, I guess. Ill-will.”

“Right,” she says deliberately. “But that animosity, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, does it? It has to be directed _at_ someone. Hate necessarily implies another that you care enough about to direct it towards.”

Phinks frowns. “Are you saying that I should be thankful Feitan hates me?” he asks, and it’s a little strong, even for what his situation is with Feitan, but he’s slowly growing irritated at this whole thing. If this is going to set the tone for the day, then he really should’ve just stayed in bed. 

Pakunoda shrugs and looks up again, thoughtful. “I’m just inviting you to consider an alternative,” she says. “I think a lot of people think of the world as a spectrum from love to hate, with love being good and hate being bad. And I’m not necessarily saying that’s right or wrong, because I don’t think anyone has the answer to that, but there’s a version of the world that exists where there might be something worse than being hated. Both love and hate are inherently social, just like human beings are. To be loved or hated is to be acknowledged to _exist_ , in a way. Given that, which would you choose? Hate or indifference?”

And he freezes, because that’s just it, isn’t it? She’s somehow managed to articulate this nebulous thing that’s been chasing him his whole life, and he realizes now that it’s starting to catch up to him, he still doesn’t have an answer yet. Part of him knows that he must have some dumb, startled look on his face, but he feels like she’s come into his home and ripped every single book off of the shelves, every knickknack, every stray thing and thrown them around until it’s all just a giant jumble on the floor for him to sort through. What to keep. What to toss. He’s suddenly thrown back into his younger self, into the haunting aftermath of being coldly dismissed, into the spiral he’s only just managed to claw his way out of, and he can feel her watching him, cataloguing all of this for future reference, he’s sure, but he barely spares it a second thought. He’s more concerned about how it feels like the room is spinning around him, and he’s trying in vain to regain some kind of purchase on the world. He wonders what all of this means. He wonders if she could possibly be right. 

“For what it’s worth,” she adds quietly, a peace offering, maybe, for upending everything, “I don’t think he hates you. And he’s certainly not indifferent. At least, that’s not how I see it.”

It’s too much, really, all at once, and he’s still scrambling to juggle all the things she’s lobbed at him, feeling like he’ll end up just dropping everything and he’ll never figure out how to pick them all back up. What’s he supposed to do with all of this, anyway? How’s he supposed to corral all this conflicting information back into order?

But before he has too much time to dwell, soft footsteps interrupt his racing thoughts, bringing them to a screeching halt. His ears ring in the aftermath. Feitan appears in the doorway to the kitchen, his hair tousled from sleep but otherwise unreadable as always. He pauses almost mid-step, like he can feel the strange energy buzzing through the air. He looks at Pakunoda and then at Phinks and back again. Pakunoda smiles placidly. 

“Don’t worry, you’re not interrupting anything,” she says, like this is any other morning, like she hasn’t just dumped earth-shattering thoughts on top of Phinks and left him to fend for himself. “Coffee?”

There’s a brief silence, Feitan narrowing his eyes at the two of them, skeptical, and then he says, his airy voice sounding unusually loud in Phinks’ ears, “Okay.”

 _I have to get out of here,_ Phinks thinks, knowing full well that isn’t an option. He’s suddenly grateful that Feitan suggested they split up the night before. He either needs time alone to shuffle everything knocking around his head back into place or a distraction, and either way, he can’t do that if Feitan’s right there. Or Pakunoda for that matter, with the way she’s looking at him. In his hand, his coffee has grown cold and he can’t wait for this job to be over. 

\---

There’s this rumor that starts sometime when Phinks is maybe ten or eleven years old, a small handful of years before he’s given any real purpose. He doesn’t really hang around anyone else, but in a place as insular as Meteor City, whispers have a way of taking hold, even for those who don’t have anyone to tell them anything. People all over the city start talking about this feeling, not just the kids but some of the adults too, like they’re being watched, but every time someone tries to look for the source, they find nothing but air. And people talk. They talk about how it must just be paranoia, must be the general lack of anything close to privacy in this slum of a city, and as it goes on, they talk about how maybe when no one was looking, something else has gotten dumped here, besides the usual trash and stragglers of human society, something more sinister. 

Phinks remembers the stories the kids tell each other, listening sometimes on the outskirts of their little camps, close but always separate, remembers the tales the spun for each other about a ghost that lives among the rubble. Maybe it’s a wandering spirit, trapped in the world of the living, searching on end for something unattainable. Maybe it’s the vengeful soul of someone who was abandoned and didn’t make it. Maybe it’s the embodiment of the collective fear and misery that hangs in the air of the city, thick alongside the smog and dust. Phinks pictures it some nights when he’s feeling especially alone, when he could swear he feels the heavy gaze of someone (something) on him, but looks out only to find darkness staring back at him. He wonders if it’s as lonely as he is. He wonders if it still feels that same desperation to _be_ somebody, or if that’s a thing that’ll fade over time. Sometimes, he closes his eyes when he feels that familiar prick at the back of his neck, pretending that maybe he has a companion. 

After Phinks leaves Meteor City, the ghost story starts to fade into the murky collective memory of the place, the residents moving onto the next rumor, the next urban legend, and when Phinks goes back these days, he doesn’t feel it anymore. He wonders if maybe the whole thing was just some kind of shared delusion, something dreamt up by desolate people trying to cling to something, anything to give their lives meaning. But then sometimes, when he’s on a job, he thinks he can feel that same distinct gaze on him, that mysterious presence that lurks just outside of the corners of his eyes, and he wonders if that’s just an old habit he can’t shake, something so ingrained it’ll maybe never go away. He wonders if it’s just the lasting effect of never quite feeling like enough.

\---

Their first real heist together as a group, the first time they’ve all been together since that very first trial run, is maybe a year into it all, maybe a little less. Chrollo has occasionally summoned them before, but it’s always been a discretionary sort of thing, the lot of them coming together in twos and threes to make off with all sorts of rare and valuable things all over the world, but something about the knowledge that this time is mandatory sits heavy in Phinks’ chest, like maybe this is the real beginning of the rest of his life, like maybe it’s all felt like kind of a dream before this. 

At the end of it all, when it’s time to scatter again, Phinks leaves with his take of the loot and the knowledge that he was well and truly wrong to ever doubt why they were brought together. There’s an ease to how the whole thing went down, and he can tell already that given the time and practice, they will be all but unstoppable, wildly different and often clashing personalities be damned. It’s an odd feeling, the certainty that he feels in the wake of this job, the way he almost feels like he was meant for something, like he belongs, and he thinks that maybe it makes him bold. Maybe it makes him feel a little invincible too. 

“You headed anywhere interesting?” he asks Feitan as they’re all starting to take off in different directions for the far corners of the world. 

They’d been sent out again together to chase down some leads and take care of the early waves of resistance set in their path, and Phinks had to sprint as quickly as he could to keep up with the way that Feitan had cut through air like he was born to do nothing else, but there’s something about this time that felt easier, however slightly, like the muscle memory is already starting to build. It makes him strangely proud, the way he’s catching up in what feels like no time, and he wonders when he’ll stop feeling like he’ll fall behind if he lets himself rest for even a moment. 

Feitan looks up at him with a skeptical expression. “Why do you care?” he asks, and Phinks wonders idly if he’ll ever see him be anything but suspicious of everything and everyone. 

Phinks shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Just curious,” he offers, and it’s mostly true, though the last bit of the equation is a mystery, even to him. 

Feitan narrows his eyes, and Phinks remembers watching him tease information out of someone for the first time over this job, the steely determination he brings to everything he does, the look in his eyes caught halfway between cold-hearted malice and some sickly kind of glee as he tortured slivers of information out of their hostage. Phinks remembers being struck by the thought that if the circumstances of their lives hadn’t brought them together like this, as partners, as players on the same team, Feitan very well could have ended up killing him. The knowledge sits like a stone in Phinks’ stomach, a feeling that would be akin to dread if Phinks didn’t find himself inexplicably intrigued at the same time. 

Feitan doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Phinks worries, briefly, that maybe he’s overstepped some kind of unspoken boundary, like whatever tentative thing they’ve settled on between them after manning the front lines together is anything but this. But then Feitan looks away and offers a shrug of his own. Phinks feels something shift in his chest.

“South, maybe,” Feitan says, and it’s not an invitation, but it’s not a dismissal either. “Somewhere warm.”

He starts walking off without waiting to hear a response, though Phinks thinks that maybe Feitan never expected one in the first place. That maybe that’s the difference between them. The thought slots into place next to the cold reality that this is no place for making friends, no place for lasting anything, and the memory from his childhood of being left behind in the dust. Maybe, Phinks thinks, he’s always expected too much of the world.


	2. growing pains (OR: interlude)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the alternate working summary for this fic was "phinks runs all over the world and learns to be a criminal and has random deep conversations with his friends every few years that change everything" but that felt a little too on the nose
> 
> anyway this chapter's like twice as long as the previous one and the third chapter is definitely going to be even longer and I have no idea how this happened but uhhhhh sorry lmao. clearly idk what pacing is anymore. also sorry this took so long I've been doing that thing where I get distracted by new fandoms before I even finish a thing again ‾\\_(ツ)_/‾
> 
> and also one last sorry for totally abusing the word “something” I swear I didn’t mean to but ya boy phinks is Confused™️ about emotions so I guess it’s fitting

_“I’m waiting for the pain to set like a sun.”  
—Nate Pritts  
_

  
  


There’s a way that continuing to run into someone without meaning to gets under your skin, a way that coincidence turns into pattern turns into expectation. People have a tendency to try to make order out of chaos after all. The world would be too frightening to deal with otherwise, and there’s something hopeful and optimistic and so uniquely _human_ about it besides. It’s what human beings are good at. Assimilation to schema. Seeing figures out of meaningless shapes against the ground. 

\---

There’s a job that both Phinks and Feitan get hired for, unbeknownst to the other, by one criminal syndicate to take out another rival group, and to break the tension between the two of them, Phinks bets Feitan the entire job’s pay that he can kill more people before the job’s over. Feitan narrows his eyes at Phinks at the challenge like some kind of feral animal ( _just so you know, I don’t lose_ ), and Phinks ends up winning, not by much, but it’s a win nonetheless ( _I don’t either_ ). 

When the job ends, Feitan makes a show of huffing and shoving the envelope with his cut in Phinks’ general direction, and when Phinks asks if Feitan wants to grab a drink to celebrate a job well done, Feitan says, “If you intend to actually pay for that, I’m taking my money back.” 

But there’s something less sharp about it than Phinks has come to expect. 

\---

There’s a few times they get called in by Chrollo, and again and again, he sends them out together. Deliberate and methodical as he always is, he’s seen something, Phinks is sure, that the two of them have both missed from the beginning. But they dutifully do as they’re told, and somewhere halfway between racing to see who will come out the winner this time and peeling every last bit of information out of informants, Phinks realizes that there’s something so easy about it all, like breathing, like waking up. He realizes that it’s been that way since the start, even with the way that Feitan used to bristle at the idea of having to partner up with anyone, even with the way that the air used to crackle uncomfortably between them, and he wonders how that could possibly be. 

\---

There’s a time when Phinks is camped out in Zaban to intercept a traveling art exhibit he’s interested in. He’s just thinking he’ll wrap up here soon, his bags full of shiny new things to drop off at the secret bolthole he keeps off in a remote mountain deep in the farthest reaches of the Yorbian continent, but then he arrives back at the abandoned apartment complex he’s using as his temporary hideout and he suddenly becomes distinctly aware that he’s not alone. The hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and he whirls around, fists raised and ready to pummel whoever’s broken into his makeshift base, but then he spots a small figure perched atop one of the dilapidated couches in the room and he deflates. 

The couch cushions have long since disappeared, along with one of the couch’s legs, and the whole thing leans perilously to one side, and Feitan sits gingerly, one leg crossed over the other, on what used to be a plush backrest but is now no more than a sad heap of cotton held together by a few stray threads. He’s paging through a magazine that Phinks picked up a couple days ago to pass the time like he’s been waiting a long time, even though Phinks knows he hasn’t been gone for more than half an hour. 

“This is a shit safehouse,” Feitan says without looking up. Phinks thinks he sounds like he only half means it. He’s learning, however slowly. 

“Yeah, well I wasn’t planning on staying more than a week, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” he says, hoping he comes off more nonchalant than defensive. Even after all the time they’ve spent together, there’s something about Feitan that makes Phinks feel like he needs to prove himself. 

Feitan looks up and tosses the magazine aside. “It matters if you’re competent,” he says, his eyes daring Phinks to take the bait. 

Phinks bites down on the urge to strike back and crosses his arms, schooling his expression into something like calm. Feitan frowns a little, looking almost disappointed. 

“Why are you here?” Phinks asks. He almost adds _I thought you were in Kakin_ but thinks better of it because even the thought makes him feel more vulnerable than he likes.

Feitan tilts his head to one side just slightly, assessing. “You busy?” 

Phinks shrugs. He got the last of what he wanted yesterday and has just been using the intervening time to take stock before heading back out on the road. 

“Not particularly,” he says. “Why, you got something for me?”

The corner of Feitan’s mouth twitches into something that might be a smile, if he’d let it. “Depends,” he says vaguely, his soft voice curling around the words like smoke. “You know how to fly an airship?” 

Phinks blinks, thrown a little off kilter by the question, but steadies himself before he lets himself think too much about it. “I’m a quick study,” he says, not sure why he says it, why it feels like he’s still trying to convince Feitan that he can hold his own. 

Feitan hums thoughtfully and after a moment hops gracefully off his perch and slips his hands into his pockets. He’s taken to wearing a long black coat lately that sweeps almost down to his feet, and it makes him look even harsher and more intimidating somehow, his small frame be damned. Phinks wants to ask how he can stand it, even in the dead of summer, but it’s probably besides the point and he wouldn’t get an answer anyway. Feitan steps unhurriedly towards Phinks and then past him and through the door Phinks just came through, and about ten feet later, he pauses and turns to look over his shoulder. 

“You coming?” he asks, and it sounds a little like a dare.

It strikes Phinks that Feitan still hasn’t told him a single concrete thing about this job, except, presumably, that it’ll involve stealing an airship, and there’s an old instinct that he can’t shake, no matter how far he gets from Meteor City, buried beneath layers of brute strength and confidence and bravado that screams at him to be wary. It’s all but burned into his bones, this tiny, nagging fear that someone, somehow, will trick him someday. 

“Is this a test?” Phinks asks, which is as close as he’ll let himself get to voicing any of that unshakable uneasiness. 

Feitan looks at him unblinkingly and asks again, although this time it sounds more like an answer than a question, “Are you coming?”

Phinks pauses for a long moment, pushing back on that fight or flight instinct that inexplicably shoots through his veins. “Yeah,” he says finally, because he didn’t leave Meteor City just to run at the slightest threat. “Yeah, I am.”

Something softens in Feitan’s expression (or maybe that’s just what Phinks wants to let himself think) and he says cryptically, “Then no, it’s not a test.”

And Phinks has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but he thinks maybe that’s when the world shifts an inch or two all over again. 

\---

When he stops to think about it, Phinks sometimes wonders when this whole thing started feeling less like a job and more like something warm and familiar, like they’re all actually friends, like he’s coming back to his real life. It doesn’t happen at once, but there’s a day when he looks up and realizes that he can’t imagine doing anything else, realizes that he’s really and truly _content_ for the first time in his whole life. And he could lie to himself and say that it’s the money and the jewels and the priceless artifacts they’ve amassed and sold over the years, but he knows, somewhere deep down, that those reasons would never be enough. He doesn’t know what, exactly, it is, but he knows that he could never do it if he didn’t believe in some greater part of it. He could never do it if it were only about the material things. 

He realizes, somewhere along the way, that he spent his whole childhood learning how to be selfish, driven by nothing more than the most primal fear of death, of abandonment, of being forgotten. He realizes now that he’s spending his entire adult life relearning what it means to actually find meaning, finally having the space to breathe and figure out what it is he really wants out of all of this, and it’s a hell of a thing. 

\---

Even as a kid, Phinks could never really sit still, and for all the bad habits he’s trained out of himself over the years, this is one that sticks. And the problem with what he does is that while there’s never a shortage of thrills and chases and all-out fights, there’s also an ungodly amount of sitting around. Between the wide, yawning time ranges that Chrollo always sets for them when they all meet up and the way that each operation is sliced up into neat steps, Phinks finds himself just whittling away the time more than anything else. He doesn’t think there’s a lot he’d change about his life – after all, he’s gotten to live out the sort of dreams that his younger self wouldn’t have ever dared to even think about – but if there’s one thing he could, it’d be this. 

He generally tries to arrive no more than three hours early for a job, even when he’s in town, even when he could easily be the first to show up, because that’s about his limit for how long he can sit around before losing his mind. And even that, he thinks as he waits with the others in a crumbling church on the outskirts of where their next job will be, even that is pushing it. 

He taps his foot impatiently, the sound echoing off the stone walls around him, and checks his watch. Close, but still some time to go. The air around him is cool and damp, and the light in the building is warped from what’s left of the stained-glass windows. Around him, the others are alternately settled on overturned pews or piles of rubble, and there’s something unhurried about the atmosphere in the room, like they’ve all been waiting for a moment to catch their breath. Phinks hates it. 

And then, just like that, the calm is punctured. A knife comes flying at him from his right and narrowly misses his ankle, instead embedding itself deep in what’s left of the pew in front of him. Phinks lets out a yelp and snaps his head towards the source. Feitan is sitting cross-legged on a bench not ten feet away from him, quietly paging through a book. His hair has gotten longer since the last time Phinks saw him and he’s got this ridiculous bandana tied around his neck, obscuring half his face, and Phinks can’t believe that the effect of it all isn’t just straight up absurd, despite the fact that the bandana has a fucking _skull_ on it.

“Stop that,” Feitan says, his voice flat and bored, “Or next time you lose the foot.”

It’s always struck Phinks how comfortable Feitan is with silence, how at home he seems in the long, lingering pauses between words, and sometimes Phinks can’t tell if he’s envious or just finds it annoying. 

“Fuck off,” Phinks shoots back. He gestures in Feitan’s general direction. “What the hell are you wearing, anyway?”

Feitan sighs but doesn’t look up from his book. “Grown men who like to play dress up have no business asking me that,” he says coolly.

On the other side of the room, he hears Shalnark snort and Machi snickers. 

“Gotta say,” Machi says, her voice lilting around the words, “I’m with Fei on this one.”

Phinks feels his cheeks flush, which only makes Shalnark laugh more and the smirk on Machi’s face widen.

“Ooh, he’s mad now,” Shalnark says gleefully, grinning over at him from where he’s sprawled out on his stomach along the length of one of the few upright pews. 

Phinks feels a hot flash of annoyance. “Shut up!” he shouts, and he’s just about ready to start throwing punches when Feitan snaps his book shut with a sharp clap. 

“The boss is here.” 

The words have an immediate cooling effect on the room, and everyone straightens up from where they’ve been sitting – or in Shalnark’s case lying down – as the creaking doors to the church swing open. They’re barely hanging on by the hinges, and Phinks spares an idle worry to whether they’ll fall off before they’re all gone. Chrollo introduces them all to their newest member, and Phinks ticks off the numbers in his head. Must be four, he thinks, remembering how odd he’s always found it that they almost always have gaps in how they’re numbered, even in the beginning when there were just eight of them running all over the world with Chrollo. 

He leans down to pull the knife out of the splintering wood in front of him as Chrollo starts to tell them about the heist this time. There’s something about a collection of rare, ancient ritual weapons that were used in some long-forgotten religious ceremony, but Phinks is more focused on the weapon that’s in his hand. It, like everything Feitan seems to own, is thin and delicate and yet somehow undeniably lethal, and its handle is carved with some kind of script Phinks doesn’t recognize. He peeks at Feitan out of the corner of his eye, and when he’s sure that Feitan is completely engrossed in the details of the job, he winds his arm back and flings the knife at his head. 

Feitan barely blinks, catching the blade by the handle neatly between two fingers without so much as glancing Phinks’ way as if it were gently lobbed over to him. He snaps the switchblade shut and pockets it. 

“Nice try,” he murmurs, and Phinks could swear that he’s smiling behind the mask covering his mouth. 

\---

Almost all of them have the tendency to take a little something extra when they’re out on a job. Phinks in particular is a collector. He loves tracking down sets of rare coins and statues and diadems, and if he sees something on a job that looks like the beginning or end of something, he usually takes it with him. Phinks likes to think of it as a tip for a job well done. 

Phinks thinks he’s got Feitan figured out too by this point, has watched him pocket enough pretty, dangerous things to guess what he’ll take next, but there are times when he’s reminded of the fact that Feitan is, unfailingly, the only person he’s ever met who he can’t quite read. 

Once, they’re wrapping up their job disposing of security around the perimeter of the complex the rest of them are trying to break into (including a couple Hunters, which was an entertaining surprise, he thinks as he remembers the way their confidence and righteousness quickly melted into fear and regret), and as they’re just about to hightail it back to their base, Phinks suddenly hears glass shatter behind him. He whirls around, almost wondering if more people have come for them except that he knows that’s impossible, and he spots Feitan stepping gingerly over the shards scattered like glitter all over the city street and into a storefront through the window. Phinks peers at the sign hanging above the door, half expecting it to be something terrifying, but it’s just an ordinary bookstore. He frowns as Feitan reappears a moment later with a thick volume tucked under his arm. 

“What was that?” he asks, more curious than as annoyed as he ends up sounding. 

Feitan shrugs and tosses the book to Phinks as they walk off. For a second, Phinks wonders if maybe he’s having a stroke, because the cover is just a jumble of something he can’t read, but then his brain catches up with him and he realizes a moment later what language it must be. 

“What’s it about?” Phinks asks, handing the book back to Feitan.

Feitan looks down at it and flips it over to the back cover. “Don’t know,” he says, eyes darting back and forth as he scans the text. 

Phinks blinks. “What?” he says, dumbfounded. “Why go through the trouble?”

Feitan looks up with a faraway look in his eye that Phinks doesn’t recognize, something almost wistful and maybe a little sad. They walk in silence for a moment, and Feitan ducks his head, almost as if he’s trying to hide behind his bandana, and Phinks almost thinks that this will be another question that he doesn’t get an answer to. 

“I don’t want to forget,” Feitan says finally, so quietly that Phinks barely hears him.

The words strike something deep in Phinks’ chest in a way that surprises him, and he finds himself at a loss for what to say to that. It’s not something they ever really talk about, that Feitan very clearly came from a _somewhere else_ outside of Meteor City, that there obviously were at some point people who claimed him as their own, that it was for long enough that even now, well into adulthood, he falls back to his native tongue on instinct, despite the fact that he can’t remember anything from the _before_. And Phinks, who has been lonely his entire life, knows that he’ll never be able to truly understand what that feels like, to live with the ghosts of a past you can’t remember. 

They make their way back to the base in silence, and even hours later, after the others have returned and everyone’s celebrating the end of the job over drinks and revelry, Phinks still doesn’t know what to do. Their base is now piled high with wooden crates and boxes full of treasures, and Feitan is settled atop a tall stack of them, separate from everyone else, legs crossed and entirely engrossed in the book he stole. It’s not like him to opt out of the festivities altogether, but he’s been in an odd mood ever since they got back, and it makes something in Phinks’ chest ache for a reason he can’t quite place. He takes a deep breath and grabs another drink and makes his way over to where Feitan is sitting. 

“Hey!” he calls out to Feitan as he scales the pile of boxes. “You want in?” 

Feitan looks up, and it’s like it takes him a moment to fully return, like he’s waking up from a dream, but then he blinks, and Phinks isn’t sure if he imagined it altogether. Feitan takes the cup that Phinks offers to him, taking a sip, and immediately pulls a face. 

“Ugh,” he says, frowning at his cup. His accent is thicker than it usually is, and Phinks wonders how far away the book has taken him. “What is this?”

Phinks laughs and sits down on a box adjacent to the one Feitan has claimed. It’s stacked up on a pile a little lower than the one Feitan’s on, and Phinks finds himself looking up just slightly to meet Feitan’s eye. 

“Someone thought it’d be a good idea to let Uvo play bartender again,” he says, taking a swig from his own glass. It’s truly terrible, but he’s past caring about it. Phinks nods towards the book in Feitan’s lap. “How is it?”

Feitan rolls his eyes and the corner of his mouth pulls up into a derisive smile. “Horrible,” he says, and means it. “Some post-apocalyptic, dystopian bullshit. As if this is what people are actually going to care about when the world ends.”

Phinks laughs, and part of him wants to ask why Feitan’s even bothering to read it in the first place, but the words get stuck in his throat before he can say anything. He thinks about the way that Feitan’s expression immediately collapsed earlier and looks at the quiet peace coloring his eyes now, and he thinks, _it would be cruel to ask twice_. Instead, he lets them sit in silence for a while, drinking side by side, Feitan bowing his head to find his place in the book again. It’s a long moment before he speaks again, unable to stop himself. 

“Have you ever met anyone who speaks the same language as you?” he asks, hoping Feitan can tell that he doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Feitan looks up again and looks out over the candlelit expanse of the warehouse they’re camped out in. In this lighting, Feitan’s features look soft and almost vulnerable in a way, and he looks so young, so much like the world hasn’t caught up with him yet in the way that Phinks knows it has. Feitan frowns, his eyebrows pinching together. The moment passes. 

“No,” he says, and then pauses. “But it’s not like I’ve been looking.”

Phinks hums and fishes around in his pocket for a cigarette. He lights it and takes a long drag, exhaling a cloud of smoke that disappears quickly into the darkness around them. 

“Can you teach me?” he asks, almost surprising himself a little when the words leave his mouth. It’s something he never quite figures out, why he decided to say that. 

Feitan raises an eyebrow at him, and Phinks grins, deciding it’s better to just lean into it. 

“I’m serious,” he insists, which makes Feitan’s expression grow even more skeptical. 

“I basically just told you that this is probably the least useful language you could ever learn, and your first thought is to ask me _that_?” he says, but there’s a gentleness that creeps in on the edges of the razors that live in his voice. “You really are as stupid as you look.” 

Phinks keeps on grinning, steadfastly refusing to take the bait. “I like languages,” he says, aiming for nonchalant. “Another thing to collect, I guess.”

Feitan stares at him for a long moment, like he’s trying to decide if he’s being mocked. Part of Phinks almost feels insulted, because there’s some kind of unspoken trust they’ve built between them by now, some promise that they’re on the same team, but then again, their relationship has always been peppered with more jokes and pranks than heartfelt moments and, well, he thinks it’s probably fair. 

“Want me to read to you?” Feitan offers, which Phinks supposes is an answer, in a way. 

Phinks takes another puff of his cigarette. “I won’t understand any of it,” he says, “Unless there’s an awful lot of swearing. I think I have that down at least.”

Feitan rolls his eyes but turns back to his book, scanning the page for where he left off. “It’ll be good practice,” he says, and Phinks isn’t sure if he means for himself or Phinks. 

(Later, sometimes, during the lulls on the job, Feitan will point out various things and teach Phinks the words and laugh when Phinks’ accent is particularly atrocious. He will sometimes turn Phinks’ hand palm up to trace with his finger how to write the characters. And it’s true, Phinks will probably never have to use any of this in everyday life, but all the waiting around doesn’t feel so bad after that.)

\---

It’s almost surprising how long they go without completely fucking up. When Phinks takes a moment to think about it, he finds himself quite impressed that they’ve been so successful for so long, especially given how young and inexperienced they started out. Beginners luck, maybe. 

Phinks tags along with Feitan to the Mimbo Republic one day, and that’s where things start to drift south, slowly at first and then all at once. They get some bad information, and by the time they realize that their plan will never work, they’re already penned in, and their chances of escape dwindle to just the barest sliver of an opportunity. They make it out by the skin of their teeth, bruised and battered and hearts pounding, and Phinks isn’t exactly sure what carried them through but when they manage to make it back to their hideout with their limbs and lives intact, he’s beyond caring. It’s blessing enough, he thinks like it’s an old habit, to live to see another day. 

“ _Fuck!_ ” Feitan growls as they crash back into their temporary base. 

His eyes are wild and frenzied, and the instant they’re inside, he tears off his bandana and his coat like he’ll suffocate if he doesn’t and a great number of the many weapons he keeps on him at all times clatter to the ground around him. He kicks a stray block of rubble and it goes flying through the air to crush a sizeable dent into the nearby wall. Phinks has seen Feitan angry before a number of times, has seen what that anger can do, but somehow, he knows that this isn’t it. There’s something more chaotic and primal about this, something uncontrollable and raging and hot, so unlike the cold, focused thing that Phinks has gotten accustomed to, and it scares him a little. 

“Hey,” Phinks says as Feitan paces, edgy and restless and muttering to himself under his breath so quickly that Phinks couldn’t pick out any of the words even if he could understand enough of Feitan’s native language to make sense of it. Phinks takes a breath and tries again, more emphatically this time, “ _Hey!_ You need to calm the fuck down.”

Feitan whips his head around, and the look in his eyes is so violent that Phinks feels his blood run cold. “ _Don’t_ tell me to calm down,” he snaps, his voice coming out like jagged glass. 

Phinks runs a hand through his hair, tamping down on the urge to snap back, because even though his gut reaction is always to meet anger with anger, force with force, he knows that they’re still not out of the woods yet. They’re alive and they have a chance to get out, but they need to move now before their assailants catch up with them. Phinks can just see the window of opportunity closing and he refuses to die here, not after everything he’s done to make it this far. 

“Look, we made it out, alright?” he says, his voice echoing through the empty building, louder than he means. “We’re fine. Isn’t that enough? Now come on – we need to go _now_.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Phinks knows he’s made a mistake. Feitan’s expression immediately darkens into something icy and murderous, and for as much as they clash sometimes, for as prickly as Feitan used to be around him when they first met, Phinks has never been on the receiving end of something like this. Feitan looks at him like he’s something despicable, irredeemable, and Phinks suddenly feels like he’s underwater, his breath feeling thick and sluggish in his lungs. He thinks to himself idly, not for the first time, that if he’s not careful, despite the trust they’ve built between them, Feitan might still end up killing him someday. 

“Fine?” Feitan says, his voice cracking in indignant disbelief. “ _Fine?_ Are you crazy? _That_ was not fine. _That_ was sloppy.”

“Fei—,” Phinks tries to interject, wondering if maybe he can get in a word edgewise, he can stop this train before it careens fully out of control. 

“No, you listen to me,” Feitan shouts over him, the edge in his voice pulling his accent in tight around his words. “Do you understand what that was? Do you get why we’re still alive right now? _We_ had nothing to do with it. That was sheer fucking _luck_.”

Feitan spits out the word _luck_ like it’s poison, his expression twisting into something disgusted. It hits Phinks like a knife, sharp and piercing, and suddenly, he feels something click into place. 

“Okay, okay I get it,” Phinks says, trying to strike the right balance between firm and understanding. “We fucked up and that sucks, but look, it’s going to—”

He feels his back hit the wall before he can get the rest of the sentence out, his head cracking against the concrete, and when his senses catch up with him, he finds Feitan glaring at him from no more than a few inches away. He’s got one arm pinning Phinks in place and the other raised to press a knife to Phinks’ throat, and Phinks is reminded of a wild animal, feral and cornered and lashing out, and for whatever reason, it almost makes him sad. 

“I swear to god, if you tell me ‘it’s going to be okay,’ I’ll kill you right now,” Feitan hisses, and there’s something even more chilling about the way his voice drops into a low rasp. 

Phinks feels the edge of the blade bite into his skin, and the last of his limited patience flies out the window. He shoves Feitan, once, hard, feeling a small surge of satisfaction when Feitan stumbles backwards. 

“Troupe members don’t fight,” Phinks says, a warning. 

Feitan narrows his eyes in annoyance and lunges back at Phinks like he’s actually aiming for his throat, but before he can get anywhere, Phinks grabs Feitan’s wrist. There’s a moment where Phinks just stares at Feitan, unflinching, daring him to try again, and when Feitan doesn’t back down, Phinks twists Feitan’s wrist until, finally, mere moments before the bones in his arms would’ve snapped, Phinks knows, he winces and drops the knife. It clatters to the floor, almost too loud in the suddenly silent room. 

“Look,” Phinks says, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice anymore. “I’ve been trying to be nice, because I’m your friend, but you know what? Whatever this is?” He gestures vaguely at Feitan. “ _This_ is not about me. This is about your shit. And it sounds like you have a lot of it to sort out. So, _stop_ taking it out on _me_.”

Phinks pushes himself away from the wall and past Feitan, letting his shoulder knock against Feitan’s when he passes. He ventures over to the boarded-up window on the other side of the room with a view of the street outside. It’s still deserted, but he isn’t holding his breath that it’ll stay that way much longer. He turns around to try to rouse Feitan to leave again, but before he can say anything, he catches the look on Feitan’s face. There’s something stunned and lost and almost pained in his expression, and he hasn’t moved from where Phinks shoved him. Phinks can’t tell what’s running through his mind, but whatever it is, it’s drawn a panicky, desperate look into his eyes, like he’s suddenly run up against something he’s never realized he’s been carrying inside of him all along. Phinks has never seen _this_ look before either, and there’s a part of him that never wants to see it again.

“Fei?” he says softly, his chest suddenly tight, the metallic taste of anger in his mouth settling heavily at the back of his throat. He shifts his weight, unsure of what he’s supposed to do, because this isn’t what they do, not ever, not once. “Fei, we gotta go.”

There’s a long moment, and Phinks almost thinks that Feitan didn’t hear him, but then Feitan nods wordlessly and goes to pick up his things. He goes through the motions of shrugging on his coat and gathering everything he’d discarded in his fit of rage, but the haunted look never quite leaves his eye. There’s something almost robotic about the way he moves, nothing like the quiet grace he usually has, and just watching him makes something just behind Phinks’ ribs ache. They hit the road not more than a minute later, Feitan’s face now obscured by his bandana once more, but the look in his eyes remains and the silence between them is nervous and troubled. 

They run and run and run until they’re three towns away, and that’s when Phinks starts looking for somewhere they can crash for the night because they can’t keep running forever and they’re rattled enough that if they go for too long they’ll almost certainly slip up again. He finds a deserted office building that looks like it hasn’t been used in years and leaps up to climb through a fourth story window that isn’t entirely boarded up. All the while, Feitan follows, like he’s running on autopilot, but he doesn’t say anything and Phinks doesn’t know what to ask. 

“This’ll be fine for tonight,” he says, hoping that maybe if he acts like everything’s normal, it’ll start to feel that way again. “We’ll have to get out of the country tomorrow though.”

Feitan nods. The haunted look has left his face, replaced with a carefully arranged perfect neutral, and Phinks can’t tell if that’s better or worse. 

Phinks flops down into a nearby couch. They’ve wound up in what used to be some kind of break room, the remains of a table and some chairs and various appliances, gutted of any useful parts, scattered around them. Phinks lets out a long breath. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says emphatically. “I’m exhausted.”

When he’s met with nothing but silence, he props himself up on his elbows to look over at Feitan. He still hasn’t moved from where he landed when they slipped into the building, and he’s staring blankly at some unseen something, something both far away and immediate. Phinks feels something shift inside of him and sits up. 

“Hey,” he says, his mouth feeling awkward around the kind of words they never really say to each other. “You okay?” 

Phinks’ words seem to bring Feitan back into himself, or maybe just back into the room, and he nods, suddenly moving with a sort of anxious urgency. 

“Fine,” he says, ducking deeper behind his bandana. He makes as if for the door. “I’ll do a sweep of the building.”

There’s something tense and forced in Feitan’s voice, something that makes it seem brittle instead of just hard, and without thinking about it, Phinks reaches out and grabs Feitan’s arm as he walks past. Feitan stops, like he doesn’t have it in him to fight back, but he doesn’t look at Phinks and he doesn’t say anything. 

“It’s okay, you know,” Phinks says, the words leaving his mouth before he can stop them, “To not be okay.”

Feitan’s eyebrows pinch together and that panicked look flashes through his eyes for a brief second before he pulls the blank cover back over them. 

“Let me go,” Feitan says, and it would be convincing if not for a barely perceptible wobble in his voice. 

Phinks looks at Feitan for a long moment and thinks about that wild look on Feitan’s face, thinks about how it collapsed into silent desperation moments later. He wonders why it seems so familiar, even though he’s sure he’s never seen Feitan like this before. He wonders why he feels like he knows this somehow. 

“You’ve never feared for your life like that before, have you?” Phinks says, and he knows he won’t get a straight answer, but he doesn’t need one. 

Feitan’s expression tightens and he tugs his arm, trying to get free of Phinks’ hold on him. 

“Let me go,” Feitan says again, and this time he doesn’t, or can’t, hide the panic seeping into his voice. “I have to go.”

He pulls his arm again, harder this time, even though they both know that Phinks is the stronger of the two of them. He finally meets Phinks’ gaze and the utter helplessness in his eyes almost knocks the wind out of Phinks. He looks like he’s right on the edge of some great precipice and he’s not sure if he’ll be able to make it to the other side. And Phinks has no idea what that’s like, to spend most of your life thinking you’re invincible only to be confronted by the reality of your own mortality too many years in. He thinks it would terrify him. He thinks it would ruin him. 

“It’s okay,” Phinks says, surprising himself a little with the gentleness in his voice. “It’s part of being human. Hell, I lived that fear for most of my childhood. We all have to eventually.”

Feitan looks almost like he could cry or collapse or maybe hyperventilate, but he’s not someone who does any of those things, so he just stares at Phinks with this unsettled look on his face and says, voice cracking a little, “I hate it.”

Phinks offers a small smile that he knows probably looks sadder than he means to let on. “I know,” he says. “Me too.”

Feitan looks at Phinks like he’s never seen him before, like he’s got the answer to every last fear tucked away somewhere inside him, like he’s waiting for absolution. Feitan looks at him, caught somewhere halfway between complete panic and some strange kind of relief, at knowing, maybe, that it never stops, at knowing, maybe, that he’s not alone in it all. 

Phinks has no idea what to do with all of that either. He releases his grip on Feitan’s arm.

A second later, quicker than Phinks can react, Feitan comes crashing into him. Feitan’s lips brush against Phinks’, carefully at first and then more insistently when Phinks doesn’t just shove him away. And it’s like the bubble of tension that’s been slowly building all night finally bursts, and Phinks feels himself melting into it before he can think better of it. There’s a small, nagging thought at the back of his head that maybe this is a bad idea, but it’s been a long day, and he’s done enough thinking for now, and he’s never been particularly good at making good decisions anyways. 

Feitan kisses him like he’s trying to find an answer to a question he’s never asked, something needy and desperate about it. He tastes like recklessness and the cigarette he stole from Phinks earlier and something almost metallic, and his hands bunch into fists in Phinks’ shirt. Phinks can feel the way Feitan’s whole body shakes with the anxiety living within him, and Phinks almost, but not quite, not enough to do anything about it, has a vague thought about the psychological phenomenon of transference and the way that human beings have a way of latching onto anything solid when things start to spin out of control. But then Feitan is pressing himself more firmly against Phinks and he’s climbing into Phinks’ lap, and Phinks suddenly feels very, very warm, and he thinks, well, it’s probably not his place to say, anyway. 

(The next morning, they leave their hideout and then the city and then the country, parting ways without ever talking about it. It gets tucked away alongside questions about the parents that Phinks sometimes just barely remembers and the homeland that Feitan doesn’t and the big burn scar Feitan papered over with his spider tattoo like he’s trying to rewrite history and all the other little things they never turn into words, things that are too prickly to even touch. And it’s a different sort of thing, maybe, than what they’ve filed away before, but maybe it doesn’t need discussing, in the end.) 

\---

Phinks weaves between the stalls of a little artisan market that Feitan sent him the coordinates for, strolling past tables set out with delicate, silvery jewelry and vague impressionistic paintings of hills that could be anywhere and hand-woven cloths dyed every color. It’s not the sort of place he pictures Feitan spending his free time in, and he’s just starting to think that maybe he read the coordinates wrong, but then he rounds a corner and spots Feitan in the next aisle, twirling an umbrella. It’s made of a delicate fabric that’s just shy of translucent and it’s a deep red color and in true Feitan fashion has a skull painted across the expanse of it. Feitan’s frowning thoughtfully at it like he’s about to make an important decision.

“Souvenir shopping?” Phinks asks, laughing as he walks up to Feitan. 

Feitan looks up at Phinks, going for annoyed and only making it about halfway there. “Not exactly,” he says, and snaps the umbrella shut. “This’ll do. Let’s go.”

As they walk away from the stand to make their way across the crowded square, the vendor chases after them and shouts, “Hey! You have to pay for that!”

Phinks is tempted to just keep walking because it’s not like any ordinary person could possibly catch them, even on their slowest days, but before he can do anything, Feitan whips his head around and glares at the vendor, his aura expanding out into something so sinister and murderous that even a non-Nen user couldn’t miss the bloodlust. The vendor freezes, turning pale, and Feitan smiles, a promise of what could come, should the vendor make the wrong choice. 

Phinks rolls his eyes. “Fei, stop terrorizing the locals,” he says. “Or is this what you dragged me all the way out here for?”

Feitan scoffs, giving one last disgusted look to the vendor before turning away, satisfied. “Come on,” he says and takes off through the square. 

Phinks follows him to a nondescript building that maybe used to be a warehouse of some sort, the air dusty and spare streams of light peeking through the cracks in the ceiling in slivers. He’s expecting some kind of briefing, some explanation for why he’s here ( _meet me_ is all the text had said, accompanied by the string of numbers that led him here) but instead, Feitan just waves his hand at the general space and says, “Make yourself comfortable. I have to do something first.”

Phinks has no idea what he’s talking about and he watches, dumbfounded, as Feitan sits down on a block of concrete and starts fussing with the umbrella. He’s prying at the handle of it like he’s trying to crack it open, and Phinks can’t imagine for the life of him what this is all supposed to be for, how this could possibly be important. 

“You made me come all this way just to watch you do some arts and crafts?” Phinks says, only half as annoyed as he sounds. He leans back against a pile of rubble. 

Feitan doesn’t look up, too focused on cleaving apart the pieces of the umbrella with a thin knife, but he says, his voice soft and distracted, “The place we’re going doesn’t allow weapons.”

Phinks makes a dubious face. “So this is your brilliant solution?” 

Feitan’s mouth twitches a little like he’s trying not to smile. Phinks realizes, looking around, that Feitan must already have been here for days. There are all sorts of tools and supplies strewn about, and an impressive collection of knives sits in a neat row to his left next to his favorite sword. It’s deceptively fragile looking, the blade long and thin, but Phinks knows better than anyone that it can do more damage more quickly than weapons two or three times its size. 

A loud crack rings through the otherwise silent building, echoing off the bare walls, and the umbrella handle splits open neatly in two. At this, Feitan lets his smile show, triumphant. Phinks watches in fascination as Feitan guts the handle of anything extraneous, taking out pieces that serve no other purpose than to reinforce the handle. Feitan’s small, nimble hands make quick work of it all and within a minute, he’s left with nothing but the pieces to make a hollow tube. He reaches for a bundle of soft cloth and carefully lays it down along the length of the umbrella handle, and then it clicks. 

“You really think they won’t check for hidden weapons?” Phinks says, and he still doesn’t know who ‘they’ is or why he’s here. 

“I’m counting on them to,” Feitan says breezily, securing the cloth in place before beginning to reassemble the umbrella. 

Phinks stares at him, half a laugh caught in his throat. _A distraction_ , he thinks, shaking his head. Only Feitan would put this much time and effort into something that’ll just get confiscated. 

“Seems like you have it all figured out,” Phinks says, shoving his hands in his pockets, feeling some strange unsteadiness creep into his fingertips. “What do you need me for?”

Feitan shrugs. He fits his sword into the new makeshift scabbard he’s assembled, testing. 

“This guy’s been a pain in my ass for years and he had the gall to try to hire me,” he says, though Phinks could swear his voice is just slightly more guarded than usual. “He deserves to be scared as much as I can manage before he dies.”

Phinks laughs. Part of him wants to say that if scaring someone is what Feitan wants, he’s got that down to a science by now and doesn’t need anyone else, but something stops him before he can say it. It strikes him then that when Feitan sends word about a job, he never asks if Phinks is free, never poses it as a question of whether or not Phinks will come. It’s always declarative, prescriptive, telling him when and where to be (though never a why), without any explicit option to opt out. Phinks supposes that he could always just not show up if he’s got something else going on, but he realizes that that’s never happened, that he’s never not come running when Feitan asks. Maybe it’s just the way that they seem to fall into step so easily these days. Maybe it’s just that Phinks doesn’t mind being invited along for intricate revenge plots. Maybe it’s just because this is just what they do, so many years in, and these kinds of habits are hard to shake. It just is. 

\---

Phinks isn’t one to get injured often. It’s rare these days that he comes up against someone truly stronger than him and he knows how to defend himself besides. Which is perhaps why it’s so surprising when, one time, he gets a face full of glass when he gets distracted by his assailant’s ally for just a moment, for just long enough for the heavy paperweight to break against his skull. He’s blinded by it for a brief second and he’s left with a killer headache and glass shards embedded in his face, and when the world swims back into focus, he finds both of their bodies on the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of blood and Feitan frowning at him, his sword dripping little red spots onto the ground beneath him. Feitan looks at him like he’s an idiot for letting them get the better of him ( _You need to watch your back, dumbass_ ) and Phinks is mostly just glad that those were the last two guys they needed to take care of before heading out ( _I thought that was your job_ ). Feitan rolls his eyes at Phinks and drags him back out into the night, muttering under his breath about how ridiculous it is that he has to put up with this right now, and Phinks can’t tell if he’s more annoyed at the situation or if he’s actually worried. 

When they get back to their hideout, Feitan makes Phinks sit on an overturned crate so he can get a better look at the damage. If Phinks couldn’t literally feel his heartbeat in his temples, he might’ve found it amusing that like this, their eyes are almost level with each other, Feitan just slightly taller for once. Feitan nudges Phinks’ head to one side and squints at the glass Phinks knows is still stuck along the right side of his face before going to get a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit he took from a pharmacy on the way back. Feitan shakes his head and lets out a long breath. 

“You’re a real pain sometimes, you know that?” Feitan murmurs. 

One hand cups Phinks’ chin so he won’t move too much and the other slowly and deliberately eases the shards free, working with a sort of care that Phinks didn’t quite know Feitan was capable of. Phinks looks at Feitan out of the corner of his eye, at the sudden softness that’s fallen over his face since they arrived back, at the way his eyebrows knit together into something maybe a little like concern. It makes something shift under Phinks’ skin, something that makes his chest feel tight, and he wonders, idly, what Feitan might’ve been like if the world hadn’t been so cruel to him, if he hadn’t been shaped into someone who needs to carry himself like he’s got razor blades hidden under his tongue. He wonders, idly, if they would’ve still met, in another life.

“Okay,” Feitan says, letting go of Phinks’ face and taking half a step back to assess. “Congrats. You’ll live.”

Phinks laughs and then winces at the way his head protests against the sudden noise. “Yeah?” he says. “My head going to stop killing me soon?”

The corner of Feitan’s mouth lifts into a wry smile, but Phinks could swear there’s something gentler about it than usual. “That’ll teach you to let your guard down,” Feitan says.

Feitan says it like it’s supposed to be a lesson, like he’s trying to make a point, but he keeps looking at Phinks with this odd light in his eye, something that Phinks would maybe almost call tenderness if he knew Feitan to be that kind of person. Feitan gets some medical tape to hold together some of the deeper cuts along Phinks’ temple, and his fingers are light, gentle almost as they press everything into place. 

“How do I look?” Phinks asks, mostly to be annoying but there’s also a part of him that doesn’t know what to make of all this softness and there’s this little voice at the back of his head telling him to run at the unfamiliar, still, after all these years. 

Feitan rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry,” he deadpans, “Your pretty face won’t scar.”

And it’s mostly meant to be funny, Phinks knows. It’s just a figure of speech in a way, but it doesn’t stop this warm feeling that that he can’t name from inexplicably bubbling up in his chest. He laughs, grinning even though it tugs at his fresh wounds, and finds that he can’t make himself stop. Feitan looks at Phinks like he’s lost his mind. 

“What?” Feitan says, an edge of annoyance creeping into his voice.

Phinks smiles up at him, a kind of foreign lightness in him that he can’t quite name. “You’re being so nice to me,” he says, teasing, knowing he’s probably toeing the line on this, but not caring enough to hold his tongue. 

Feitan’s eyes widen for a brief second and the next thing Phinks knows, Feitan punches him in the arm, scowling. He doesn’t hold back. 

“Shut up,” Feitan says, ducking his chin behind his bandana and turning away to pack up the medical supplies and start gathering their things. “I’m not _nice_.”

“ _Ow_ ,” Phinks says emphatically, rubbing at the spot where Feitan hit him. His arm smarts and he wonders if it’ll bruise. 

Feitan ignores him and continues fussing over the bags they brought with them and the paper trail they don’t want to leave behind. Before they head out, they’ll gather everything they’re not bringing with them into a neat pile in the middle of the room and light it up, burning away any evidence that they were ever there except the destruction they leave behind in their wake. It’s a familiar routine by now, and Feitan goes through the motions of it all easily, and Phinks watches, marveling at the notion that he’s become someone who has routines, even just little ones like this. 

“Hey,” Phinks says after a moment. 

His voice comes out more quietly than he intends, but it still easily fills the hushed atmosphere. Feitan pauses and looks over at him, his expression entirely unreadable. Phinks wonders if he maybe imagined the openness, the vulnerability from just a minute ago. Phinks smiles, smaller this time but maybe more genuine. 

“Thanks,” he says, and he’s not sure what exactly he’s thanking Feitan for (for rescuing him earlier? For patching him up? For the countless years spent watching each other’s backs?), but he feels like there’s something that needs to be said, something he doesn’t have the vocabulary for, something he never learned how to do.

The barest hint of the tenderness from earlier flashes across Feitan’s face, so quickly that Phinks would’ve missed it if he’d blinked. Feitan nods and looks away. 

“Of course,” he says, the airiness of his voice making him sound a little like he’s saying something profound. 

And again, it’s one if those things that Feitan just says, that are just said to fill the empty spaces, but Phinks finds himself wondering how much Feitan means it, wondering if it’s a promise. But as soon as the thought enters his mind, he shakes it off, pushing himself to stand and start helping Feitan with cleanup, and it becomes just another idle curiosity stored somewhere deep in his mind. In a few hours, he won’t even remember having thought it. And in the end, it probably doesn’t matter anyways. Phinks never planned on counting on anyone besides himself. 

\---

There’s a time, several years into it all when Phinks looks up and realizes a lifetime has passed. He stopped counting the days after he stopped looking over his shoulder ever other minute, after he stopped worrying that if he let his guard down for even a second, he’d meet his end. He stopped counting when just waking up every morning, alive and intact, stopped feeling like a blessing. 

There’s a time, years into it all, in a lull after a job when they’re just lingering, taking a moment to breathe before scattering to the far reaches of the world, when Shalnark looks at Phinks and asks, “Can I ask you something?” Asks, “Why did you join the Troupe? What were you looking to get out of it?”

And it’s not something anyone has ever asked him before, not directly anyway, and it’s not something Phinks has actively thought too much about, because the moment he starts to, he feels a strange sort of existential dread creep up his spine and before he can do anything else, he runs. He wonders, even after all this time and all this practice wanting things, why he’s still so afraid to stake out a claim on things he doesn’t have. He thinks about who he was as a kid and all he can remember wanting is to just not die. He thinks about having to fend for himself and picking fights with everyone he ran into and the way his nerves never seemed to settle, and all he can think of is the ache in his chest screaming at him to do something, anything to survive another day. There’s never been anything else, but somehow he knows that this isn’t the answer Shalnark is looking for, knows deep down that this isn’t even the answer he himself has been searching for his entire life. 

“I don’t know,” Phinks says finally, hating how uncertain he sounds, hating that he doesn’t have anything else to say. He clears his throat and looks away. “What’s it to you?”

Shalnark shrugs. He’s quiet for a moment like he has to think about what he’s going to say, and when he does speak, it completely floors Phinks. 

“We’re coming up on ten years with the Troupe,” he says significantly. “A few more and some of us will have spent more time with than without it. Seems like as good a time as any to stop and take stock.” He pauses and looks at Phinks, and Phinks thinks this is maybe the most serious he’s ever seen him, and it almost frightens him. “We all got into this knowing that the future was never going to be a given. With what we do, we all sort of know, you know, that we could die at any time. And when that happens, don’t you want to be able to say that it was worth it? That you got what you were looking for?”

The whole thing throws Phinks completely off balance, because he has no idea how to respond to that, because it’s maybe something he’s never let himself think, that all this effort put to not dying should be working towards something, that there has to be something more than this most basic existential fear. Maybe what he really wants at the end of the day frightens him. Maybe he knows by now that what he wants most is something he can’t have. 

Phinks is saved from having to find a way to articulate the panic that’s building up in his chest, the way that his lungs press uncomfortably against his ribs, when Feitan wanders over to them, bored of whatever card game the others are playing and looking for a distraction. 

“Hey,” he says and settles himself on the armrest of the couch Phinks and Shalnark are sitting on. He’s looking at Phinks like the sudden anxiety is plain as day on his face, and Phinks scrambles to school his expression into something resembling calm. 

“Fei!” Shalnark cheers, and with a significant look to Phinks says, “We were just talking — why did you decide to join the Troupe?”

Feitan arches an eyebrow at him, surprised maybe at the question that to him must seem like it’s come out of nowhere. But then he tilts his head slightly to one side, considering, humoring Shalnark all the same. Part of Phinks almost, unfairly, wants the question to stump Feitan, if only so he can say that he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t come up with anything. 

“To see the world, I guess,” Feitan says finally, meaningfully like there’s something else there between the words if you were to listen carefully enough. “I wasn’t going to die in a place that didn’t want me.”

Shalnark hums. “Interesting,” he says, looking at Phinks as if to say _See? What about you?_ before he gets up to go get a closer look at the card game raging on. Uvogin and Nobunaga are bickering now about something. 

Phinks feels Feitan’s eyes on him, thoughtful and assessing, but he doesn’t have it in him to meet Feitan’s gaze. There’s something about the conversation he’s just had that’s left him feeling raw and defenseless, and he’s not ready to return to the world of the living quite yet. Feitan leans an elbow against the backrest of the couch and shifts to look somewhere else, and the act almost feels like a kindness. 

“What was that about?” Feitan asks, watching with mild interest as the argument over cards escalates. 

Phinks shrugs. “Nothing important,” he lies, and he knows that Feitan will be able to tell, knows that Feitan will know that he knows, but he can’t bear to rehash everything just yet. Just one more time, he runs instead. And for all his talk of not being nice, Feitan lets him. 

\---

Over the years, Phinks has learned a great many things about who Feitan is and what he’s like. He’s often reserved and quiet and he generally doesn’t speak much around people he’s not deeply comfortable with except to toss out the occasional zinger. He tends to lurk on the fringes of things instead of sticking himself in the center of everyone’s attention, and he waits and he watches and he’s capable of a kind of patience Phinks could never possess. He rarely shows what he’s feeling and even more rarely talks about it, and he’s got this stillness in him like he could stay in one place till the end of time if that’s what it takes to do what needs to be done. 

All of that goes out the window when Feitan drinks.

Which is not to say that he’s running around getting drunk all the time, obviously. In fact, Phinks can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Feitan well and truly drunk, and it’s almost always been preceded by some kind of dumb challenge that Feitan, because he’s never been one to back down from anything, no matter how trivial it is, can’t say no to. It’s like this the time that Nobunaga challenges Feitan to a drinking contest the night before they’re all due to start a job, and it’s a terrible idea, because Phinks can’t think of anything more unpleasant than trying to work while hungover, but they’re all bored of the waiting and Chrollo won’t arrive till the morning and it’s a way to kill the time, he supposes. 

And so, that’s how Feitan and Nobunaga spend the night going shot for shot, as Shalnark and Uvogin make bets on who’ll bow out first and Machi divides her time between shaking her head at the lot of them and whispering conspiratorially in Pakunoda’s ear. Phinks sits on the couch they dragged into the middle of the room, laughing as their newest member, Shizuku, muses about whether they’ll reach alcohol poisoning before either of them give up. The run-down cabin they’ve taken over in the hidden away foothills surrounding the nearby city is filled with raucous laughter and people shouting over each other to be heard as they all drink and poke fun at each other and egg on the making of bad decisions. Phinks thinks idly that it’s a good thing they’re so far away from the nearest neighbor, because if there weren’t miles separating them from the closest hint of civilization, they’d all probably be found out by now and that would be bad news for everyone. 

A loud whoop breaks out across the room, and when Phinks looks over again, he sees Nobunaga stumbling off to go puke or pass out or something and Feitan watching him leave with a smug smile on his face. Shalnark laughs and pumps his fists in victory before yelping as Uvogin tries to grab him into a headlock. 

“Should someone check on him?” Shizuku asks, peering down the hallway that Nobunaga disappeared to. She only looks maybe half as concerned as she tries to sound.

Phinks shrugs. “He’ll be fine, probably,” he says, mostly confident in what he’s saying. “And anyway, if he can’t work tomorrow, that’s his own damn fault.”

Shizuku starts to say something else, but before she can get more than a word in edgewise, Phinks gets distracted by someone poking at his arm. When he looks to his right, he’s greeted by the sight of Feitan scrambling to perch up on the armrest of the couch next to him, a wide, silly smile on his face, still giddy and high from his victory.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Feitan says, continuing to prod at Phinks’ arm, his words slurring together into a blur, his accent thick around the syllables. 

Phinks laughs, caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “Hi,” he says when it becomes clear that Feitan isn’t going to stop until he says something.

Feitan drops his hand and grins. “Guess what,” he says, and Phinks is halfway to saying _what_ when Feitan interrupts him like he can’t keep the words in his mouth, “I won. I always win.”

“Pretty sure that’s not true,” Phinks says, mostly teasing, mostly to get a rise out of him, because it’s been a long time since either of them have really been counting wins and losses. 

Feitan’s eyes widen in feigned offense. “ _Liar_ ,” he shouts, pointing his finger at Phinks for emphasis and poking his cheek. 

Phinks hears a click behind him and turns to see Shizuku snapping a picture of Feitan with her phone. 

“Amazing,” she says, and Phinks makes a mental note to not do anything blackmail-worthy around her. 

Phinks feels Feitan hit his arm again. “Hey!” Feitan whines, punctuating each word with another smack. “You’re not listening to me!”

Phinks jerks out of range. “ _Ow_ ,” he says, but he can’t stop himself from smiling, because Feitan looks so indignant and his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are a little unfocused and shining with a kind of vague, drunk energy. And then as soon as Phinks turns his attention back to Feitan, his whole demeanor changes to something almost bright and cheery, if Feitan were the type to do bright and cheery, and he starts babbling on about something to do with a prank war he got into with Shalnark a few years back and _hey did you know I won that one too? I told you I always win_ , and Phinks just laughs and laughs and laughs.

Nobunaga stumbles back into the room some minutes later and promptly proceeds to pass out across an armchair, limbs splayed in every direction. Pakunoda snickers into her drink, and Machi rolls her eyes, but even she can’t hide the way her mouth curls up just so. Shizuku snaps a picture of Nobunaga as well. 

The night eventually simmers down after that between the alcohol and the late hour and the burst of excitement, and eventually, they peel off one by one to turn in for the night, Uvogin doubling back after a minute when he apparently takes pity on Nobunaga and carries him off to sleep in a proper bed. Phinks looks to his right. After almost a full hour straight of talking about nothing in particular in what’s probably the most impressive demonstration of stream of consciousness speech Phinks has ever seen, Feitan had finally paused for a breath and Phinks had gotten distracted by talking to Machi about something, and when he’d looked back, he’d found Feitan curled up in a compact ball against his side, fast asleep. He’s still asleep now, half an hour later, and there’s something very soft and vulnerable about how he looks, the way the harsh planes of his face have smoothed out into something almost gentle. They’re the last to turn in for the night, and part of Phinks is almost tempted to let Feitan keep sleeping here, because it seems almost rude to puncture this sense of peace that’s settled in around them. But they have a job to do in the morning, and Feitan’s probably going to hate himself enough as it is after drinking so much, and Phinks figures he should probably be nice.

He nudges Feitan with his arm. “Hey,” he says. When he gets no response, he tries again, a little more forceful this time. “C’mon Fei. You gotta go to bed.”

Feitan shifts slightly, shaking his head and pressing his face into Phinks’ side. “In bed now,” he mumbles, almost certainly only half aware of what he’s saying. 

Phinks lets out a breath, but he finds himself somehow less annoyed than he’d expect of himself. Instead, something soft and tender in his chest pushes up against his ribs, and he can’t breathe for a moment. He swallows against the lump in his throat and bends to scoop Feitan up in his arms. Feitan would probably kill him for carrying him, especially pseudo-bridal style, if he had his wits about him enough to notice, but as it is, Feitan just makes a quiet, sleepy sound and leans his head into Phinks’ chest.

There aren’t enough rooms in the cabin for each of them to have their own room, but earlier in the day, he’d spent an hour with Shalnark moving around furniture so there are enough beds in each room for them to double up. Phinks pokes around until he finds the last open room at the end of the upstairs hall. It’s outfitted with a twin and a queen-sized bed, and there are big windows that let in the cool, silvery light from the full moon outside, making the whole room look like it’s glowing. Phinks sets Feitan down on the twin bed and goes to pull the curtains shut so the morning will be a little less rough. 

He hears a squeak from the beds, and when he turns around, he finds Feitan burrowing under the covers of the queen-sized bed, shoving his clothes into a messy pile on the floor next to the bed. There’s a loud _thunk_ as Feitan’s coat, pockets heavy with whatever collection of weapons he’d brought with him falls to the ground. Phinks sighs. 

“Get out of my bed,” he says, because there’s no way he’s fitting comfortably in the smaller bed, even though he knows there’s no negotiating with Feitan at times like this. 

Feitan pulls the blanket up over his head. “I like the big bed,” he says, his muffled voice sounding petulant. His words are heavy and barely understandable through the sleep seeping into his voice.

Phinks rolls his eyes and goes to get his things so he can brush his teeth and change into pajamas, and when he gets back to the room, he finds Feitan sprawled out across the bed and taking up an impressive amount of room, all things considered. Phinks nudges him, and Feitan whines. 

“At least scoot over,” Phinks says, shaking Feitan until he relents and rolls over to the point where he’s taking up a more reasonable amount of space. Phinks lets out long breath and slides into the bed, phone in hand to check his messages before he sleeps. 

He’s scrolling through some messages in his inbox, offers for future jobs and new leads on the next exciting thing he hasn’t yet planned, and he suddenly becomes acutely aware that he’s being watched. It almost surprises him that Feitan didn’t immediately fall back asleep after this last time Phinks woke him up, but he doesn’t look up from his phone, skimming over a particularly promising update on a private collection of some rare artifacts that were a part of some ancient burial ritual once. 

“What’re you doing?” Feitan murmurs, quiet but clearer, somehow, than before. 

“Just checking something,” Phinks says. “Don’t worry about it. Go to sleep.”

Phinks feels the mattress shift as Feitan sits up and leans in to peer with unfocused eyes at the bright screen in the otherwise dark room. 

“New things to steal?” he asks, sounding bleary but just slightly more awake now that he has something potentially interesting to focus on. 

“Mhmm,” Phinks says absently, “I’m a thief. It’s what I do.”

“Thief,” Feitan repeats, like he’s never heard the word before and he’s turning it over in his mouth, feeling it out. 

He’s quiet for a moment, lingering so long on whatever thought is going through his mind that Phinks looks up, blinking away the afterimage of his phone screen as he lets his phone fade into darkness. Feitan stares at him, his expression unreadable in the dim lighting of the room, quiet like he can’t decide something. Phinks doesn’t know what to say, so he just waits, even though he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, just that expectation hangs heavy in the air. 

“Thieves take what they want, right?” Feitan says finally, with the kind of careful over-enunciation that comes only with being very, very drunk.

Phinks blinks, surprised. “Yeah,” he says, letting the words run on autopilot while he tries to figure out where this is going. “Yeah, that’s the point.”

Feitan nods and repeats, a little like he’s talking himself into something, “Yeah.”

He stares at Phinks for a moment longer before he leans in quickly like he doesn’t think he’ll do it if he lets himself slow down and presses his lips against Phinks’. Phinks sees it happening like in slow motion, and he can hear that voice at the back of his head warning him that this is probably a mistake, that he should probably stop before he does something he can’t take back, but his body refuses to move until Feitan’s lips touch his own. And when he moves, it’s not to move away but rather to lean into it, lifting his hands to tangle into Feitan’s hair. Feitan makes a soft noise at the back of his throat and shifts closer towards Phinks, tasting like bitter liquor and something sharp and wild and yet somehow sweet and heavy. Feitan climbs into Phinks’ lap, running his hands over Phinks’ exposed skin, and Phinks feels a shiver shoot down his spine. 

“Is this a bad idea?” Phinks hears himself blurt out, because he’s less drunk than Feitan but still enough to say things he might regret later. 

He feels Feitan smile against his mouth. “God, I hope so,” he says, voice low and dangerous, and Phinks feels his whole body light on fire.

Feitan kisses him like he’s trying to win something, insistent and unyielding and stubborn, and even as Phinks flips them so that Feitan is beneath him and staring up at him with these wide, glassy eyes, he thinks that maybe Feitan was right, maybe he always does win, in the end. For a moment, Feitan looks at him like this, here, is the only thing that’s left in the world before he reaches up to drag Phinks down to kiss him again and again and again, and Phinks feels a little like a balloon about to burst, light and buoyant and a little like his chest is too small to hold whatever this feeling is. And he doesn’t know what to make of any of it, and he thinks, maybe this was always a game he was going to lose. Maybe he’s still got more tenderness in him than he’d ever care to admit. 

(The next morning, he wakes up with Feitan next to him, grumbling about everything he can think of, and Phinks offers to make a breakfast run, partly because Feitan looks a bit like he truly wants to die and also partly because there’s this sudden nervousness under his skin, like if he waits around too long, he’ll hear something he can’t unhear. And by the time he gets back, everyone’s up and Chrollo is mere minutes away, and the job starts in earnest not a few hours later. There’s planning to do and roles to be assigned and information to be gathered, and before he knows it, the day has passed. They’re set to begin the next day, bright and early when security is the lightest, and the whole day, Feitan doesn’t say anything about the night before, even though he finds plenty of time to complain about being hungover and challenge Phinks to their usual competition on the job and argue with Nobunaga about what it means to make a stealthy entrance into the warehouse they’re breaking into. Phinks thinks to himself that maybe Feitan doesn’t remember, that maybe all the alcohol from the night before wiped away any trace of the strange intimacy they’d stumbled into, and it makes something thorny and bitter settle into his stomach, and he has no idea why. But then at night, Feitan crawls into his bed again and into his arms, and Phinks feels something unspool in his chest and thinks, _okay. Okay, okay, okay_.)

\---

Phinks doesn’t often stop and think very deeply about what things mean, in the grand scheme of things. He lives in the doing of things, of moving from one place to another, in the luxury of never looking back. Machi had asked him once, if he thought there was something greater that any of them could be working towards, if there could be something to be had that’s bigger and better than just the wealth and notoriety they’ve amassed over the years. Something that lasts. Something significant. He hadn’t known what she’d meant by that, and he remembers still the look of disappointment that fell across her face, like she was counting on him, of all people, to get what she was saying. But when he’d asked her what she’d meant, she only shook her head and walked away ( _if you need to be told, then you’re not the person I should be talking to_ ). He’s never been able to figure out what she was trying to say to him. 

It doesn’t bother him, mostly, that he’s just living from job to job, going wherever the next exciting thing takes him without any sort of larger agenda, because things are easy that way, and isn’t that what he started all this to do? To make things easy? But there are times when it’s all but thrown in his face, that he’s just wandering blindly through life and that he might be wrong. There are times when his friends look at him like he’s crazy when he mentions that he doesn’t really have a plan, for what his next job will be, for what his next year will be, and he realizes that maybe he should take the time to stop every once in a while, maybe he should stop running. It’s this old habit, he thinks, to keep going and going and going, never stopping to think too much because time spent thinking is time wasted, and he’s been borrowing against what feels like a very limited amount of time ever since he was a kid. 

“You know,” Shizuku says to him once, some time later, crisp and calm like it could be any other thing, like she’s not dredging up some deep existential truth. “Just because the future might not exist doesn’t mean you can’t have dreams for it.”

She stares at him with eyes that seem to pierce straight to his soul, and he feels like he’s been found out, like there’s some secret he didn’t know he was keeping that she’s just dragged to the surface. It isn’t something he’s ever mentioned to her and they really haven’t known each other that long besides, but she keeps looking at him like she knows that he’s spent his whole life chasing something he can’t quite see. It makes his head spin in a way he doesn’t like, and he never quite manages to come up with a response to her. 

It sometimes sucks, he thinks, to have friends who are all so incredibly perceptive.


	3. loose ends (OR: how it all comes together)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really feel like my characterization in this fic has been kind of all over the place, but maybe think of each chapter as a distinct phase in phinks' life and then it'll start to seem a bit more coherent 
> 
> anyway!! last chapter!! though I did write a lil bonus coda from fei's pov, so read on if you like!

_“From the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.”_  
_—Louise Glück_  
  
  


Phinks doesn’t know, has never known, what to call this thing it is that he and Feitan have found themselves doing. He hesitates to call it anything at all, because they’re criminals first and their lives are spent in precarious and liminal spaces, because stability is as foreign to him as the idea of home. But as the many months blur together into years spent on the road, sometimes without Feitan but more often with him, again and again and again, he finds himself falling into bed with Feitan, until being with him starts to feel more comfortable than being without him. It’s not something Phinks even realizes has happened at first, until he’s hit with the stark absence of it, and when it dawns on him, it scares him a little bit, because it was never part of the plan, because he’s never been the type of person to have anyone, and it’s always felt safer that way, somehow.

Because being lonely has always been painful, but at least it’s a known, at least there are no surprises. 

\---

In the aftermath of a job in Padokea, Phinks ducks outside the hangar they’ve commandeered as their base. Shalnark had called him and Feitan a week ago, along with Uvogin and Nobunaga, because he’d had something big in mind and just needed the extra firepower, and they’re all toasting to a job well done after tying up all the loose ends. It’s loud and boisterous and Phinks would ordinarily be all for it except he hasn’t slept much in several days and it’s finally starting to catch up to him. He leans back against the outer wall of the building and closes his eyes, feeling weary down to his bones as he fishes around in his pocket for a cigarette. Maybe this is what getting older means, he thinks, remembering being sixteen and running on fumes for weeks at a time and never missing a beat. 

The night air is cool and crisp and as Phinks lights his cigarette, a light breeze sweeps through the area. It smells faintly of salt and he considers taking a trip to the shore before he heads out of the country. A sliver of light falls across the ground in front of him, and when he looks up, he sees Feitan slipping out of the hangar, his bag slung over his shoulder. Feitan slides the door shut and pauses for a moment, blinking into the darkness like he’s searching for something, before his eyes land on Phinks, and some inscrutable thing settles onto his face. 

“Thought I might find you out here,” he says as he makes his way over to Phinks. He drops his bag on the ground by Phinks’ feet. 

Phinks nods at the bag. “Going somewhere?” he asks, more to ask than anything else. 

“Ochima,” Feitan says simply, and there’s something careful and almost clipped about his tone. 

Phinks lets out a breath, thinking about the miserable week he’d spent there years ago around this time, the way the humidity clung to him like a second skin, though depending on where exactly Feitan’s going, it might not matter what time of the year it is. 

“Great time to go there,” Phinks deadpans. 

Feitan smiles like he’s hiding a laugh, and something shifts in Phinks’ chest. “Yeah, well I’m not going for the sights, am I?” Feitan says. 

Phinks smiles too, feeling an odd, faint sort of ache somewhere deep beneath his skin. A moment lingers between them, and Feitan reaches to take the cigarette out of Phinks’ hand. He takes a long drag and lets the smoke curl out between his lips in wispy tendrils as he exhales. Phinks thinks, somewhere at the back of his mind, that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Feitan get his own pack, that Feitan has just been stealing from him for years. 

“You want company?” Phinks asks, watching the smoke fade out into the night. 

Feitan hesitates halfway to bringing the cigarette back up to his mouth, and it’s just for a fraction of a second, but Phinks catches it nonetheless. His fingers twitch, restless and edgy. 

“Can’t,” Feitan says, sounding almost sorry, even though he’s got nothing to be sorry for. “This guy’s super paranoid. One attempt on his life and he won’t hire anyone he’s never met before. As if that’ll keep him safe from all the cold-blooded killers out there in the world.”

Phinks smirks, trying to ignore the way his stomach drops. “You mean like you?” he says, teasing. 

Feitan looks down, obscuring his smile behind his bandana. He taps the cigarette idly, watching ash drift to the ground.

“Yeah I guess,” he says, his airy voice echoing in the space between them, too loud almost in the still nighttime air. 

He falls quiet after that, the smile slowly fading into something pensive and far away. Phinks wonders often where Feitan’s mind goes when he gets like this, but he never quite works himself up to ask. He’s not sure why, but it somehow feels too intrusive, like it’s not his place to ask or know. He reaches out to take his cigarette back, fingertips brushing lightly against Feitan’s. 

“How long will it take?” Phinks asks, his voice coming out barely above a murmur. For whatever reason, anything louder feels like it would be inappropriate. 

Feitan shrugs. “Don’t know,” he says. “Like I said – paranoid. Won’t give any details except in person.”

Phinks makes a skeptical face at Feitan. “This guy seems like a pain.”

Feitan lets out a small laugh. “Yeah, well,” he says lightly, “As it turns out, paranoia pays very well.”

Phinks hums, lifting his cigarette up to his mouth and eyeing the bag that sits on the ground by their feet. He exhales and asks, “When are you leaving?”

And he’s not stupid; he knows what the answer to his question likely is, but for a reason he can’t pin down, he needs to hear it said, like the saying of it is what makes it real. 

Feitan frowns like the question leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, and when he meets Phinks’ eyes, he’s got this look on his face that Phinks can’t name, that makes him feel like there’s something pressing in on him from all sides. Phinks makes himself take a deep, measured breath, wondering why he’s felt so jumpy since they started talking. 

“Tonight,” Feitan says finally, quietly. “As soon as possible. I already told the others. I have just shy of thirty-six hours to get to the other side of the world, so I’ll need all the time I can get.”

And even though Phinks knew, he _knew_ that’s what Feitan was going to say, it still makes his breath feel thick and sluggish in his lungs, like he’s breathing in water. He clears his throat, hoping the feeling will pass if he just ignores it for long enough. 

“Right,” Phinks says, mostly succeeding in sounding nonchalant. “Makes sense.”

Because it does make sense, because everything Feitan is saying makes sense, and it’s not like they never work solo besides, but it doesn’t stop the way his breath catches in his throat. It’s a thing, if Phinks takes a moment to think about it, that’s been happening more and more these days, the way his heart stops for just the briefest slip of a moment at the mention of a somewhere else that he can’t follow to. Feitan looks at him like this is all written plainly on his face, looks at him with something that Phinks can’t place, that’s maybe pity or maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, it makes him feel seen in a way he’s not sure he likes, especially because he himself doesn’t quite understand what there is to be seen, and he shifts his weight uneasily. 

“I’ll text you when I’m free again,” Feitan offers, and it sounds a little like a promise, even though thieves like them aren’t really in the business of making promises. He smiles, uncharacteristically warm. “Just don’t get into too much trouble while I’m gone.”

It’s an out, mostly, an easy opportunity to steer this all back into more familiar territory, and Phinks feels the knot in his chest loosen. This, he can do. This, he gets. He pulls the corner of his mouth into a smirk. 

“You worried about me?” Phinks teases, not quite back to grounded but getting there. 

Feitan rolls his eyes. “Worried you might do something stupid and then I’ll have to break you out of prison,” he says flatly, but there’s no bite to it. 

Phinks laughs. “I’m offended you think I’d be that sloppy,” he says. 

Feitan smiles, an undercurrent of something almost fond in it, and doesn’t say anything in response like Phinks expects, instead just lets them drift back into a comfortable silence. The brisk breeze rustles through Feitan’s hair, which is longer than he usually lets it get thanks to three back to back jobs, and the moonlight makes his pale skin look almost luminous. As he looks up at Phinks, the soft shadows cast across his face make his features look strangely delicate, like he could break if Phinks pushed too hard, even though Phinks knows that he’d just end up with a fist full of glass if he tried. Feitan has this look in his eye like he’s looking for something on Phinks’ face, like he’s looking for something inside himself maybe. 

“Fei?” Phinks says softly, almost whispers, because that twitchiness is back, because his nerves are screaming at him to do something, anything. 

Feitan blinks like he’s been brought back into himself, but that searching look doesn’t quite leave. He steps forward into Phinks’ space, slowly, deliberately, like he’s giving Phinks a chance to stop him, but Phinks just stares, frozen in place, an anxious sort of anticipation buzzing just under his skin. Feitan reaches up and pulls Phinks down towards him, a hand settling at the back of his neck, and kisses him, tilting himself up on his toes to meet Phinks halfway. His other hand curls itself into a fist in Phinks’ shirt, and Phinks turns soft and pliant on instinct alone, feeling warm down to the tips of his toes, his own hands coming up to rest at the small of Feitan’s back, to thread through his hair. The cigarette falls to the ground, forgotten. 

And it’s like nothing Phinks has ever experienced before. Feitan, who’s always been so pushy and demanding, who never gives an inch that Phinks doesn’t fight for, kisses him like he’s trying tell Phinks something he doesn’t have the words for, soft and slow and sweet. Feitan kisses him like he’s trying to memorize the shape of his mouth, like he’s something precious, and Phinks feels his heart slam against his ribcage, so hard he’s sure Feitan must feel it too. He feels a little like he’s being filled with something bright and beautiful, and he doesn’t know what to do with that, because he’s never been someone who’s been allowed to just _have_ beautiful things. It leaves him breathless. It leaves him terrified. 

Feitan’s lips linger on his for just a moment longer than Phinks expects before he pulls away and rocks back on his heels. He loosens his grip on Phinks’ shirt and smooths out the wrinkles he’s bunched into the fabric, and when he looks up at Phinks, his expression is a sort of soft that Phinks has never seen before. He looks like he’s on the verge of asking something, of maybe telling him a secret, but thinks better of it, pressing his lips together like he’s trying to stop the words from tumbling out. Instead, Feitan just smiles, a tiny sliver of a thing that somehow burrows deep under Phinks’ skin anyway. 

“Take care of yourself,” Feitan says softly, and Phinks almost shivers. 

Feitan steps away and scoops up his bag before turning to leave, and Phinks just stares, mouth slightly ajar and breathing in shallow gasps, dazed and helpless. His lips still tingle a little from where Feitan’s mouth met his, and the only sound he can hear as Feitan fades into the darkness is the sound of his own heartbeat, rapid and erratic. He should say something, he thinks ( _Goodbye? Stay safe? Good luck?_ None of them feel quite right), but by the time he finds his voice inside of him, Feitan’s already long gone, racing through the night to the other side of the world. 

“Yeah,” Phinks says, a long-delayed response meeting nothing but silence, and he suddenly feels very cold. 

(A few hours later, he realizes that the phrase he’d been looking for most closely resembles _I’ll miss you_ , and it stops him dead in his tracks. He tells himself that this is normal, that people who spend as much time together as they do, people who consider themselves friends are allowed to feel things like this. And it’s true, and he knows it’s true, but somehow he still feels a little like he’s lying to himself. He has no idea what about.)

\---

Phinks doesn’t hear from Feitan for six months.

\---

In Yorknew, in the waning days of August, Phinks is one of the first to arrive. Only Chrollo and Shalnark have beat him there, and he spends several impatient hours pretending to be calm. He hates being this early, but he hates being late too, and he’s gotten pretty good about showing up just at the right time, but he’d had nothing better going on, no excuse to linger where he’d been, so he’d just come, dragging his feet a little to draw the journey out. As the others start to trickle in, a couple hours later, someone mentions that they heard through the grapevine that there’s at least a few of them who won’t arrive till sundown ( _Feitan’s group_ , Shalnark says, and hearing the name strikes Phinks like a knife in his chest). Phinks huffs out a sigh and sits down on a block of concrete. How long has it been, he wonders, since it took the boss calling them all together for him to see Feitan again? How long has it been since he’s even thought about it?

By the time the sun sets, Phinks has been annoyed for more than seven hours. It should be a relief when he sees Feitan walk in with Machi, Nobunaga and Franklin trailing behind in the midst of an argument that looks like it’s been dragging on for some time, but Phinks just feels the knot tighten in his chest. Machi’s rolling her eyes as she walks in ( _this is the last time I’m carpooling with you idiots_ ) and Feitan shakes his head ( _I regret agreeing to it this time_ ), and it’s all so, so familiar and it should be comforting, but Phinks can’t find it in him to untense. 

Instead, he watches sullenly as Feitan wanders across the room to Shizuku first, handing her a thick envelope, and says, “Money was slow coming through.”

She smiles at him. “It’s no problem,” she says serenely. And then she adds, “I wouldn’t go back to Ochima anytime soon, by the way. They’re not too happy with you over there.” 

She says it like there’s a story behind it, like some kind of inside joke, and there’s just a hint of a smile from Feitan peeking up over his bandana, something sneaky and sly. She says it like she was _there_ , on this mysterious secret job that’s kept Feitan busy on the other side of the world, and that’s maybe what bothers Phinks the most. He has no idea when they got to be so close, when she started becoming someone Feitan called up for help on the job, or even how or why they were working together. He crosses his arms and looks away. 

A moment later, Phinks feels rather than sees Feitan approach him, settling to sit down nearby. Phinks doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look over, and it feels petty, but he’s been waiting for hours (months) and he’s at the end of his rope. 

“Hey,” Feitan says finally, and the sound of his voice after such a long time grates on Phinks’ nerves for a reason he can’t place. 

“How was Ochima?” Phinks asks after a beat, relenting when it becomes clear that Feitan’s waiting for a response. His voice doesn’t sound quite as neutral as he tries for it to, but it’s close enough. 

Feitan takes a moment to answer, like he heard it too. “Hot,” he says casually, “But I managed to enjoy myself a little.”

Phinks finally turns to look at him. Feitan’s hair is shorter now than it was the last time Phinks saw him, cropped back to the length that Feitan prefers, and he looks well-rested and sharp for someone who’s been away for more than half a year. He’s looking at Phinks like he’s trying to figure something out, head tilted just a little to one side, his bandana offering a layer of separation between the two of them. 

“That why you called Shizuku?” Phinks asks, because he knows what Feitan’s version of fun looks like. He realizes later that maybe what he really wants to say is _why didn’t you call me?_

Feitan narrows his eyes and Phinks realizes that his voice probably sounds harder than he means for it to. “In part,” Feitan says slowly. He frowns at Phinks for a moment, scrutinizing him, before he says bluntly, “You’re upset with me.”

The way he says it is not a question. He says it like it’s a truth he’s scooped out of Phinks’ head, and for whatever reason, it irks Phinks. He looks away again. 

“I’m not upset,” he says, and it sounds forced even to his own ears, but for as much as he courts violence, he avoids confrontations (almost always with Feitan, _especially_ with Feitan). “I’m great.”

He pushes himself up to walk off and catch up with some of the others he hasn’t seen in a while, and he can feel Feitan’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his head, but he doesn’t look back. He can just picture the look on his face, the scowl that must’ve settled into his mouth, the way his eyes must be narrowed, assessing, waiting. It’s a look Phinks usually tries to do everything he can to not be on the receiving end of, but today, under a layer of irritation that’s made him bold (and maybe a little reckless), he finds that he doesn’t really care. It feels like justice somehow. 

After a handful of minutes, the weight of Feitan’s gaze leaves him, and Phinks feels suddenly chilly. Maybe, he thinks, Feitan will just let it be. Maybe Phinks won’t have to think too much about why this whole situation is pissing him off so much. He should know better, really, and he does — he just doesn’t quite let himself remember it until Feitan suddenly appears by his side and grabs him by the elbow to haul him off somewhere. Six months, and Phinks has gotten a little rusty. 

“Hey!” Phinks protests, but Feitan’s grip on him is firm. 

He could probably wriggle free if he really wanted to, but the glint in Feitan’s eye tells him that would be a bad idea, and Phinks is not so stupid as to start gambling with his life. As he stumbles after Feitan, thrown off kilter by the force with which Feitan is dragging him along, Phinks hears Shalnark snicker ( _ooh, someone’s in trouble_ ) and Phinks turns to flip him off before Feitan pulls him out of the room. 

In the hallway, sheltered away from prying eyes, Feitan finally releases Phinks, all but throwing him against the wall. Phinks catches himself before he hits it, steadying himself. He crosses his arms reflexively and after a second looks down at the floor, unable to keep meeting Feitan’s fierce eyes. He hears Feitan sigh, annoyed. 

“If you’re upset about something, either spit it out or get over it,” Feitan says sharply, his words coming out as if off the edge of a razor. It’s been a while, Phinks thinks, since he’s heard Feitan be so severe towards him. “You’re an adult. Start acting like one.”

Phinks grits his teeth. Out of habit alone, he says, “I’m not—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Feitan interrupts him and when Phinks finally looks up, he sees Feitan pinching the bridge of his nose, peeved and exasperated. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ insult me by lying to me. You know I can tell.”

Feitan’s words puncture something building in Phinks’ chest, and he lets out a long breath, deflating. He feels the anger slowly leak out of him until what was maybe the root of this all along starts to emerge. There’s this ache in his chest that he’s been refusing to acknowledge for some time now, this ball of hurt that he doesn’t know how to deal with. The only coping mechanisms he’s ever developed in his life involve lashing out at anyone who comes too close, like if he can just hurt someone else enough, this pain under his skin will go away. His hurt always comes out of him in the wrong shape, mangled and ugly, and all he knows how to do is dump it on someone else and run until it starts to fade into the distance again. 

Phinks sputters, trying to find the words to explain that he feels like he’s caving in on himself, that he’s been slowly imploding every day for the past several months. He wants to say that it’s made him sloppy, that it’s made him the kind of impulsive he thought he’d left behind in Meteor City so many years ago, and that trying to pull it all back together again all by himself has felt more and more like he’s just making the tangled threads of his life more muddled. But it’s not something he can name, not quite. It’s just this feeling that he can’t escape and can’t figure out when or where or why it started, and he wants to say that he hates it, that he hates himself a little for feeling this way, that he hates that Feitan left without a second thought and didn’t look back this whole time. But he can’t.

What he ends up saying, what ends up being so much more and so much less than what he means and what he’s been grappling with in a futile battle against his own opaque self, is, “You could’ve called.”

It comes out sounding small and pitiful almost, and Phinks hates that too. 

Feitan jerks back half an inch like he’s been hit, furrowing his eyebrows at Phinks like he’s trying to decide if he heard Phinks correctly. As he stares at Phinks, his expression slowly shifts like he’s on the cusp of figuring out something that Phinks hasn’t even discerned for himself yet. Feitan sighs again.

“You could have too,” Feitan says quietly, the edge gone from his voice in favor of something almost pitying. The expression on his face is almost _sad_ , and he lets out a short, incredulous laugh, shaking his head, before turning to walk away, muttering under his breath, “This is fucking ridiculous.”

Phinks isn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it or not, or if it’s just supposed to be some secret, unspoken thought that’s slipped out by accident, but either way, it makes Phinks’ heart leap up into his throat. Something like panic suddenly shoots through his veins, like he’s finally done something he can’t undo, like if he makes the wrong choice here, it’ll all be over (whatever _it_ is). He wants to run after Feitan, to stop him before he can get somewhere Phinks can’t follow, but there’s a part of him that’s also very, very afraid. 

“Fei,” Phinks says, and he’d be embarrassed about the desperation coloring his voice if he had his wits about him enough to be. 

Feitan stops and turns just slightly so he can look at Phinks out of the corner of his eye. His face is obscured by his bandana and a shock of black hair, but Phinks thinks he can see something tired and disappointed in it all the same. For a moment, Phinks can’t breathe, his whole world teetering on a knife’s edge.

“We’re not kids anymore, Phinks,” Feitan says softly, and Phinks can’t tell what the tremor in his voice is. “You do have some control over what happens to you, you know.”

Feitan disappears back into the main hall of the building, and Phinks feels something unravel in his chest. There’s something that needs to be said resting on the tip of his tongue, something he’s maybe never said before, something that terrifies him for what it represents. He turns the sentiment over in his mouth again and again, and before he can feel out the shape of it, the others have already left and come back one man short and with what they hope is their treasure. Phinks watches as they file in and Feitan disappears to some back room with their hostage, and he feels a restlessness creep back into his bones as he waits, knowing better than to interrupt Feitan while he’s working but bursting at the seams with a thing he can’t name. He waits, and it must only be a handful of minutes that pass as Nobunaga and then Machi wander back to check on the progress, but by the time Machi returns with a quick nod to Chrollo to confirm that they’ve got everything they need, Phinks feels about ready to jump out of his own skin. 

As he stands and makes his way back to look for Feitan, hands shoved deep in his pockets so no one will see the way they shake, he tries to take slow, measured steps, but it all feels so fast, too fast. He could be running, for how fast his heart is racing, thumping and thumping and thumping and then suddenly stopping when he finds who he’s looking for. Feitan sits in the center of a small, dark room, looking almost bored as he pages through a book, illuminated only by a few flickering candles, the tools of his trade still spread neatly on the floor, and in the corner, a man whimpers softly through bag over his head. He must’ve gone easily, Phinks thinks, looking at all the untouched tools still sitting bright and shiny in front of Feitan. Phinks remembers the first time he’d seen a scene like this, remembers thinking that Feitan could’ve killed him one day if they’d met not as allies but as adversaries. Phinks thinks that this feeling hasn’t changed, except that when he pictures what that kind of death would be like, he feels it more in the center of his chest than the dread that used to sit heavy in his stomach. He thinks it wouldn’t hurt so much as burn him up from the inside out. 

Phinks leans against the doorjamb and draws in a deep breath and then another, trying to settle his jittering nerves. Feitan doesn’t look up, but there’s this barely perceptible shift in the air around them that Phinks might not have noticed if this had happened a handful of years earlier. Feitan turns a page in his book.

“Can I help you with something?” he asks, and it sounds so formal, Phinks feels something splinter inside of him. 

Phinks clears his throat, looking down and kicking at a stray pebble, feeling entirely out of sorts. He’s been trying to practice what he’s going to say all evening while Feitan’s been away, and he still has no idea what he’s supposed to say, except that maybe he was wrong. 

“I’m sorry,” Phinks says finally, the words feeling clumsy and unwieldy in his mouth. He tries to remember when the last time he apologized for something was. 

Feitan doesn’t respond, but his gaze is no longer quite focused on his book, instead staring at some invisible middle ground just in front of it. He sits perfectly still, as if waiting. 

_Waiting for what?_ Phinks finds himself thinking desperately. _Why can’t you ever just tell me?_

“I’m sorry,” Phinks says again, the words suddenly coming all at once. “I wasn’t—I got really bored or something, I guess, while you were gone, and I did some stupid shit. And it wasn’t your fault but it made me mad, and you know I don’t really do mad very well. I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

His voice almost echoes in the still, quiet air even after he stops speaking, and there’s a moment when it feels like everything freezes. And then Feitan flips his book shut and stands, and Phinks finally releases a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. Feitan gathers up his things, deliberate and careful, and Phinks almost wonders if he’s stalling too. Phinks can’t think up a single reason why Feitan would. 

When Feitan turns to walk towards him, the impassive mask has fallen from his face, and he mostly just looks tired and maybe a little sorry himself. Phinks doesn’t think he’s ever seen Feitan look like this before, and it makes his chest hurt like he’s just been hit. Feitan’s holding something in his hand as he makes his way over, turning it over and over again between this fingers, and when he stops in front of Phinks, he slips it into Phinks’ jacket pocket, patting it twice like he’s making sure it stays put. His hand lingers a moment and he looks up at Phinks and smiles, just a little, and every last bit of tension drains out of Phinks’ shoulders. 

“My phone was compromised,” Feitan says quietly, not like he’s ashamed but maybe a little like he’s practiced exactly what he wants to say. “This is my new number.” He pauses and then adds, “You should probably consider changing yours too. I don’t know if they got into my contacts.”

Phinks breathes out a laugh despite himself, despite the fact that he hasn’t felt anything but heavy in far too long. Relief that he hasn’t been just ignored or forgotten. Relief that he’s not been the only one making bad decisions lately. He thinks about all the times they’ve been told, that _he’s_ been told by _Feitan_ , to never save anything anywhere unless it’s absolutely necessary, to never create trails they can’t cover up behind them, and he thinks about the way Feitan guards information about himself like it’s the only thing he really has, at the end of the day, and all Phinks can do is stare in disbelief with this sort of half-smile on his face, partly stunned that Feitan would ever let this happen, partly because there’s a buoyancy in him that won’t have it any other way. 

“That was pretty careless of you,” Phinks says, and maybe any other day, he would have said it more like a taunt, but today, it ends up sounding a little more fond than anything else. 

The corner of Feitan’s mouth twitches and he ducks his head, almost like he’s embarrassed now, except that Phinks has never known him to feel that way about anything. When he looks up at Phinks again, there’s a soft shade to his eyes that Phinks doesn’t know the name for. Warmth, maybe. A kind of acceptance. 

“Yeah, well, I guess we’ve both been a little stupid lately, huh?” Feitan says, and it sounds like what he’s trying to say is _I’m sorry_ too. 

He holds Phinks’ gaze a moment longer before looking away again like he couldn’t keep at it any longer even if he wanted to and slips by Phinks out of the room. His footsteps are almost inaudible, even against the hard concrete in this hollow space, but Phinks knows the exact cadence of them, would recognize the sound anywhere, and waits until he’s sure Feitan has gone back out into the main hall to join the others before reaching into his pocket and pulling out what Feitan left him. It’s a scrap of paper, neatly folded into a perfect square, and inside, Phinks finds a series of numbers scrawled in Feitan’s messy, slanted handwriting. The ink is slightly smudged from where his hand must’ve dragged against the paper as he wrote, because for as much as he’s trained himself to be ambidextrous, he still defaults to his left when given the chance, and it’s such a tiny thing, but Phinks feels a little like he’s being welcomed home anyways. It’s a small comfort, he thinks, to know sometimes that there are things in the world that don’t change. 

\---

The last time they’re in Yorknew, almost two years earlier, it’s winter and chilly, and years later, all Phinks ends up remembering is bite of cold wind across his cheeks and the sound of Feitan’s laughter in his ear, high and clear and coming out in a warm rush of air by his neck as Phinks zips through the city streets on a stolen motorcycle with Feitan holding tightly to his waist. They’re being chased by what’s beginning to look like the entirety of the city’s police force, and the thought crosses Phinks’ mind that they could probably run faster than this, but they’ve got what they came for and they’ve got nothing but time stretching out in front of them, and there’s something to be said for the chase besides. They blast through a toll booth on the highway leading away from the city and lights flash as their pictures are snapped, and Phinks can’t quite see but he thinks he catches out of the corner of his eye Feitan grinning and cackling straight at the security cameras around them. 

“How pissed do you think they’ll be when they realize that having our pictures means nothing?” Feitan says in Phinks’ ear over the roar of the road, all live nerve endings and high on adrenaline. 

Phinks rolls his eyes but can’t quite stop a smile from tugging at the corners of his mouth. When he glances over his shoulder, he sees that Feitan’s eyes are wild and bright. His hair is windblown, and his cheeks are flushed from the cold, and Phinks feels something squeeze in his chest.

Later, when Feitan settles back into his skin, comes into something a little more pensive, something a little more real, he looks at Phinks and says, “It’s a little crazy, isn’t it, that we’re so sure of ourselves even though we don’t really know anything about ourselves for certain. Birthdays, birthplaces — most of what we know doesn’t exist anywhere but in our own heads. Doesn’t that ever make you feel like you don’t really know who you are?”

The question hangs in the air like a thick fog, and Phinks finds himself at a loss, a cold, sharp contrast with the unbounded energy from earlier in the day. Phinks wonders if maybe their narrow escape has made Feitan more daring than usual, more reckless, because this is everything they’ve never talked about, everything that’s always been understood to be better left unspoken. Feitan asks the question like an idle thought, but Phinks knows instinctively that it’s more than that, that it could never be so simple for him. Phinks thinks about the way that Feitan has never let go of his accent, despite his many years away from the people who must’ve claimed him as their own at some point in the distant past, thinks about the way that Feitan tucks away any slightest reminder of a home he’s never known somewhere deep inside himself, the books he’s read, the words he’s taught Phinks, the things he keeps for himself alone. 

And Phinks wants to say, _wherever we started doesn’t matter._ Wants to say, _all that’s ever mattered is the here and now._ Wants to say, _I know you. I do. Isn’t that enough?_

But all that ends up coming out is, “You’re you. You’re Feitan. No need to overthink it.”

And Feitan smiles at him like he can hear the unspoken thoughts knocking around Phinks’ head anyway. 

\---

After – after they realize that Uvogin is never coming back to them, after their briefly won victory at the auction, after Chrollo leaves them with his sights set eastward, after Pakunoda’s last act of defiance, of the sort of resolve that she’s made a name for herself on – after all of that, the whole world starts to take on a different color. Everyone’s a little quieter, a little paler, a little smaller somehow, like someone’s pressed mute on their lives. There’s talk of going home, of scattering till all the broken pieces fit back together again, but in the end, most of them end up staying. It should feel comforting, in a way, to be with what remains of the Troupe even after everything that’s happened, to stay with what’s most familiar, but the atmosphere is mostly uneasy. The spider lives on, but nothing feels anywhere near as certain as it used to.

Machi and Shizuku set up a makeshift grave for Pakunoda, and they set out some extra candles for Uvogin too in lieu of anything better, and Phinks supposes that this is what people do to cope with the gaping hole that’s left behind when people you care about leave you, but it all feels wrong. It’s not like he hasn’t lost anyone before. Death has been a constant in his life ever since he was a kid, and it’s not even like they haven’t lost members before, but he knows that this is different. This is the first time they’ve lost any them who have been here since the beginning, and after so many years, it leaves him feeling a little hollowed out, like there’s something he’ll never get back. He’s old enough now that he can say that he’s spent over half his life with these people, and there’s something to that, at the end of the day. 

It’s still quiet, even after a couple days have passed, and as Phinks wanders through the run-down building, peeking into empty rooms in search of Feitan, he wonders if the group of them have ever this subdued before. He finds Feitan in the small room they’ve turned into a memorial for Pakunoda, and his back is to the door, but his head is down and shoulders are hunched, and Phinks doesn’t even need to see the look on his face to know that this is another one of those moments that Feitan will probably never talk about, not really, but that will make itself known in the way that he carries himself nonetheless. Phinks leans against the doorframe, debating about if it’d be inappropriate to puncture the quiet. It ends up being a decision he doesn’t have to make.

“She shouldn’t have had to die,” Feitan says softly, and he doesn’t turn around, but Phinks can picture the way his eyebrows must be drawn together.

Phinks lets out a long breath. “You know as well as I do why she did it,” he says, knowing that the knowing of it doesn’t make it any easier. “It was her choice.”

For a moment, Feitan is very, very still, and Phinks is almost worried that he might do something, because he’s been wound tight like a spring ever since Chrollo was captured, but then he sighs and turns around. He looks like he’s about to say something when his eyes land on Phinks and then he freezes again. He blinks, perplexed. 

“What are you wearing?” Feitan asks, and it’s not quite as sardonic as it normally would be, but it’ll do, for now. 

Phinks looks down at himself, at the tux he’d stolen in the early morning from some obnoxious, boutique clothing store, and then he looks back up and grins. The smile feels awkward on his face, but there’s a part of him that worries that if he stops soldiering on, he’ll forget how to start again. 

“Don’t worry, I got you one too,” Phinks says, holding out a garment bag to Feitan. When Feitan raises a skeptical eyebrow at him, Phinks asks, hoping that he’d made the right guess earlier when trying to figure out what the best distraction from all this loss would be, “Still want to see a man about a game?”

Something akin to interest, a sort of playfulness, flashes across Feitan’s face for a brief moment, and Phinks feels something swell in his chest. 

“Don’t tell me you’re suggesting we bid on anything,” Feitan says, but he’s already walking over to Phinks to grab the proffered suit. 

Phinks smirks. “To you?” he says. “Never.”

Feitan rolls his eyes as he walks down the hall to an empty room to change, but Phinks thinks as he follows, hands in his pockets, that maybe he’d spotted the barest sliver of a smile. He thinks to himself, as he settles to lean against a chunk of concrete to wait for Feitan to get ready, that maybe that, for now, is enough to soothe the way his bones ache. Feitan changes with the sort of deliberate efficiency Phinks has come to know him for, and Phinks watches idly as after a minute, Feitan searches out a broken bit of window to check his reflection as he ties his bowtie. His slender, nimble fingers make quick work of it, and after adjusting it so it’s perfectly straight, he turns expectantly to Phinks, looking almost eager to set out. He pauses and then smiles, letting out a breath that might’ve been a laugh in better times. 

“You know you need to tie that, right?” Feitan says, pointing at the undone bowtie hanging around Phinks’ neck.

Phinks lifts a shoulder to shrug and smiles too, a little sheepishly. “Don’t know how,” he says, and he knows he could probably figure it out if he really wanted to, but he’d been half hoping that Feitan would already know and save him the trouble. 

Feitan scoffs and shakes his head but comes over to Phinks all the same. “It’s not that hard,” Feitan says, a hint of the usual edge to his voice creeping back in. 

“I look like the kind of guy who gets much practice wearing suits?” Phinks says, which makes Feitan roll his eyes again. 

Feitan points to an overturned crate and snaps his fingers once, sharply. “Sit.”

It’s all just left of normal, like they’re playing the roles of the people they are rather than truly living it, and it feels like just putting a band-aid on something larger, something more significant, but Phinks has felt unusually raw the past few days and he’s too tired to try to pry open the box of hurt building up in his chest. He does as he’s told and sits down and lets Feitan nudge his chin up and out of the way. Feitan’s eyes are soft and focused as he knots Phinks’ bowtie into place and adjusts the collar of his shirt. His hands are a kind of gentle that always catches Phinks off guard, just a little, because even after all this time, Feitan is more sharp edges than anything else, but there are times like this when Phinks thinks that maybe he’s been looking in the wrong place. 

Feitan tugs Phinks’ jacket into place so it’ll fall just so off his shoulders and then takes half a step back, tilting his head slightly to one side, assessing. “There,” he says, “Now you’re perfect.”

And it’s one of those things that Feitan just says like it’s nothing more than a passing thought, like he’ll forget he ever said it tomorrow, but Phinks feels something shoot up his spine, freezing him in place. Feitan’s already across the room again, fishing his phone out of the pocket of his discarded coat before they head out, and Phinks just stares, wondering when the air got to feeling so thick. It’s something that’s been happening more and more lately, the way the room seems to squeeze in on him, his vision narrowing to a point, and he can’t figure out what it all means. Feitan turns around again and raises an eyebrow at Phinks, and the whole world spins back into motion. 

“We going or not?” Feitan asks. 

Phinks grins, mentally shaking himself out of whatever momentary stupor fell over him, and stands to lead the way way out. It’s a beautiful day when they emerge from their hideout, and it’s been beautiful ever since the rain cleared the morning after everything changed, and something about that feels cruel, like the universe is laughing at them. He wonders a little if this was inevitable, if this is how the universe cashes in on the debt all of them have incurred, fighting against fate to live longer and better than they were ever meant to. Next to him, Feitan is quiet, and the whole way to the auction house, he has this faraway, pensive look on his face that’s been there ever since Pakunoda died. Phinks wonders if Feitan, too, has been trying desperately to sift through the memories she left them, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened. The thought sits so heavily in Phinks’ stomach that when they get to the auction and settle in somewhere in the back of the ornate, grand hall, that he’s relieved by all the noise and commotion, even though on an ordinary day, he’d probably find the whole scene irritating. 

The auction is already in full swing by the time they arrive, and no one spares them a second glance, and they watch, rolling their eyes at the exorbitant prices these rich fools are paying for overhyped artifacts and laughing when something they’ve stolen before pops up on the big screen. It’s the closest Phinks has come to feel like he’s having _fun_ since this whole ordeal started, and when Feitan smirks and leans in to murmur something in his ear ( _that’s fake — I still have the real one_ ), Phinks thinks that maybe this is the first good decision he’s made all week. 

Feitan shakes his head as a gaudy set of vases gets sold for over a hundred billion Jenny. “Would you ever pay that much for anything?” Feitan asks, and there’s the usual derision in his voice at the way that ordinary people spend so much on things that can be taken so easily, but Phinks thinks there’s maybe something else there too, a hidden question that Feitan’s not quite articulating. 

Phinks shrugs. “Well, I wouldn’t be a very good thief if I did, now would I?” he says, because it’s the answer he’s been set up for, the answer to get the pretext out of the way and figure out what else Feitan is trying to say. 

The corner of Feitan’s mouth is pulled up into a half-smile as he watches the next lot get announced. His expression is thoughtful as they watch the crowd get worked up again over some new rare, useless thing. After a moment, he turns to look back at Phinks, and there’s an intensity to his eyes that makes Phinks almost lose his breath. 

“What if there was something in the world you couldn’t steal?” Feitan says, and Phinks feels oddly like he’s being tested, like there’s a right answer that he’ll maybe never get. 

Phinks laughs then, because he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to do, because it feels better to play it off instead of admitting defeat. “Yeah?” he says, a little challenging too. “And what would that be?”

Feitan looks at him for a long time like he’s searching Phinks’ face for something, something specific, something significant. Phinks isn’t sure if Feitan finds what he’s looking for, because he hasn’t the slightest clue what it could be, but after a moment, Feitan looks away again and back out at the auction, his expression settled like he found what he needed, even if it wasn’t what he wanted. 

“I don’t know,” he says softly, but there’s this tone to his voice like it’s only a half-truth. 

It surprises Phinks, because Feitan’s always got this thing about telling the truth, especially between partners, especially between friends, but it doesn’t startle him enough to make him ask. He’s not sure why exactly he hesitates, but after so many years, Phinks feels like he’s got a pretty good gut instinct about this sort of thing, and his is telling him that whatever the truth is beneath this all, it could have the potential to ruin him. Why else hide it? 

\---

There’s this recurring dream that Phinks has been having for years. The world is dark, and he’s running and he’s not sure why he’s running but he knows that if he stops, nothing good will come of it. When he looks out in front of him, there’s a large hill, steep and unforgiving, and at the top, there’s a kid. Phinks can’t see more than a vague silhouette, but the kid’s chasing after something, a bird maybe or a butterfly, and laughter rings out in the air, and Phinks knows without knowing how that he has to catch up to this kid. He has to catch up before something happens. He runs and runs and runs until he feels like his legs will give out, but by the time he gets to the top of the hill, the kid is nowhere to be found. 

Instead, the darkness almost seems to get thicker, like it’s trying to suffocate him, and Phinks tries to shout, turning around and around, trying to find where the kid went, but his voice makes no sound and the darkness descends on him. He shouts and shouts until his throat is raw and he still can’t make a sound. He can still hear the laughter, clear and bright like a bell, even though he can barely see anything else, and he knows that if he can just catch up to it, everything will be okay. He runs blindly through the sea of black, running towards the sound like it’s a guiding light, and just as he thinks that maybe, the gloom is starting to fade, that maybe he can see the shape of the person he’s chasing, the ground gives out beneath him and he falls down through the air until he wakes up with a start. 

Simple dream analysis says that if there’s a child in your dream, it really represents you. Phinks always wakes up feeling like he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to figure out something he can never even fully grasp, like there’s something missing but it’s something that maybe he’s never had so he can’t really even tell the shape of it. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever catch up to something that’s always eluded him, but when he wakes up, he finds himself thinking about all the things his friends have been saying to him over the years, all the things he still doesn’t have answers for. What’s he looking for, at the end of the day? What does he want? What else is out there?

\---

The game that Feitan makes them steal from the auction ( _the most expensive and dangerous game in the world_ , he keeps reminding Phinks with glee) actually does turn out to be a rather interesting distraction from the mess that’s their real lives. There’s a whole world in it, bright blue skies and vibrant green grass and eclectic towns, and it feels so real that it’s easy to forget, just a little, that the outside world is still spinning on. They make their usual bet, the victor to be determined by a combination of cards and body count, and the wager is the usual. One favor. No limits, no questions asked. To be cashed in whenever the victor so chooses. 

After they go their separate ways, a few days into the game, they meet back up again a week later and then at the end of every day after that to tally up their progress, and they mostly linger well outside the various towns that populate the game, because even here the old habit to stay on the fringes of civilization remains. The constant feeling of being watched still follows them around from time to time, because the instinct in this game after all is to look for any way to get a leg up, but after their first night in the game, when Feitan takes out three assailants in the fraction of a second before Phinks even wakes up in the middle of the night to realize that they’ve been followed ( _Oops_ , Feitan says when Phinks snaps awake, _I probably should’ve taken their cards first, huh?_ ), no one really bothers them anymore. It feels almost like a vacation, and it’s such a novelty to Phinks that he almost (almost) forgets that the loose thread tying the entire Troupe together is closer to snapping than it’s ever been. 

“Do you ever wonder what you’d be doing if you hadn’t joined up?” Feitan asks him one night, restless and edgy like he’s been ever since everything wound down in Yorknew. He picks at a stray block of wood with a knife, cutting out pieces in little splinters. 

Phinks almost laughs. “Don’t have to,” he says, and this, he knows, is the truth. “I’d be dead.”

Feitan tilts his head slightly to look at Phinks out of the corner of his eye. “You really think so?” he says, sounding skeptical. “Even back then, you weren’t weak.”

Phinks smiles. It’s maybe the closest Feitan’s ever gotten to complimenting him, and it stirs up a funny feeling in his stomach, something he’d maybe call butterflies if he were still young and naïve. 

“Yeah, well, I was a pretty dumb kid,” Phinks says, shrugging. “Didn’t really think things through. I’m sure I would’ve pissed off the wrong person sooner or later.”

The corner of Feitan’s mouth curls up into a smirk, and he stands, kicking the piece of wood into the small bonfire they have going. “Yeah,” he says softly, “Yeah, maybe.”

Feitan rolls his shoulders back and turns his head this way and that, stretching out stiff joints. His neck makes a satisfying _pop_ and he winces just a little. He lets out a long breath like he’s trying to breathe something unwanted out of himself and then turns to face Phinks, something searching and thoughtful in his eyes. He takes a couple steps closer to Phinks and reaches out to brush back a couple flyaway strands of Phinks’ hair, windblown and a little messy from running around the woods all afternoon. Feitan tilts his head to one side. 

“How old are you now?” he asks quietly, and he knows the answer to the question and Phinks knows that he knows, but it almost sounds like there’s something he doesn’t have the words for yet on the tip of his tongue. 

Phinks, seated on a rock by the fire, looks up at Feitan, whose face is cast in flickering shadows. It makes him look a little like he’s a ghost, like he could disappear if Phinks looks away. 

“Twenty-eight,” Phinks says, and it feels, somehow, like a confession. 

“You didn’t think you’d make it to twenty-eight?” Feitan asks, and it sounds almost gentle instead of judgmental like it could. 

_I didn’t think I’d make it past twenty_ , Phinks thinks, but he finds that he can’t say it, because saying it would be admitting to something he doesn’t quite know how to put into words. Instead, he asks, “Did you?”

Feitan’s eyes narrow and he shrugs. “I don’t make a habit of assuming anything,” he says, like it’s easy, like it’s the natural thing to do. “Not even death.”

“Seems like a tough way to live,” Phinks says, and just thinking about the precariousness of living a life like that makes his head spin. 

Feitan ducks his chin and frowns down at the ground for a moment. “It’s not so bad,” he says, and Phinks wonders how much of that Feitan really believes. “You just hold onto the one or two things that are constant and learn to accept that everything else will always be a little unknown.” 

He looks up then, and his expression is soft and open. He smiles a little, and Phinks thinks that this is probably the closest he’s ever seen to what Feitan might’ve been like had the world been just a little kinder to him, and it takes Phinks’ breath away. 

“That’s why I have you,” Feitan says, quiet but matter-of-fact, like this too is a given, and Phinks feels his whole world screech to a halt. He stares at Feitan, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, and instead of ridiculing Phinks over it like Phinks expects, Feitan just grins and says, a whole different kind of teasing, the kind that Phinks knows, maybe, how to grapple with, “I can count on you to make inane decisions that I then have to get us out of.”

Phinks blinks, half a laugh caught in his throat. It takes him half a second longer than usual to find his voice, and when he does speak, he says the only thing he can think of over the sudden litany of _what the fuck_ running through his mind. 

“I don’t _only_ make bad decisions,” he says. 

And if his heart wasn’t racing before, then when his statement draws a sort of sly grin to Feitan’s face, something a little wicked and mischievous and maybe a little fond underneath it all, Phinks feels like his chest could break open with how hard his heart hammers against his rib cage. There’s this feeling that’s quietly and secretly set up shop within him, something that he’s maybe been carrying around for years before realizing it, something he’s been ignoring for a long time, mostly because he doesn’t understand what any of it even means, but also maybe is a little afraid of what the answer to that question might be. He’s never had practice figuring out the way that he aches down to his bones sometimes, because his entire life has been about being and staying on the run, because he never stands in place for long enough to have the space to think. But now, he supposes, there’s nothing but time, nothing but waiting until things are righted again, and the thought terrifies him. 

“Yeah?” Feitan says, closing the scant foot of distance between them and looking at Phinks like it’s a challenge. “You going to stop me then?”

Phinks is halfway to asking what the hell Feitan is talking about when Feitan reaches out to lift up Phinks’ chin just slightly and kisses him. It’s so light that it’s just barely there, and Feitan pulls away just enough for his face to hover maybe an inch away from Phinks’, and the corner of Feitan’s mouth turns up, like he’s daring Phinks to do something. And Phinks doesn’t have the slightest clue what Feitan is looking for, what exactly the dare is except that it is one, because it feels like there’s something more happening than just this. But then he’s moving before he can think better of it, still, always, acting first and damn the consequences, and he’d say, maybe, that it’s just habit at this point, that it’s the muscle memory of so many years spent on the road together and the patterns they’ve fallen into over the course of it all that pushes him to grab Feitan’s shirt and pull him back down, but he knows in the back of his mind that would be a lie. He’s still not sure what exactly the truth is that he’s hiding underneath it all, so many years later, but he’s certain now, at least, that the lie is there. 

Phinks feels Feitan grin against his mouth as his own hands settle at Feitan’s hips, the small of his back, tugging him closer, closer, like maybe the only way Phinks knows how to know he’s not alone in the world is through touch only. And Feitan kisses him like he’s still searching for the answer to his challenge, like maybe nothing would’ve been enough. Feitan kisses him until Phinks can’t breathe, and Phinks thinks that whatever this is, whatever Feitan is trying to get him to see, it could ruin him. 

When Feitan pulls away, his eyes are a little wild, a little spacey around the edges, and his mouth is still curved into a small smile, but it’s softer somehow, warmer. Phinks, inexplicably, finds himself thinking that he’d maybe give anything to never forget this look.

“Bad decision,” Feitan murmurs, and he doesn’t sound like he really means it, but Phinks is starting to think that maybe Feitan is right. 

Phinks laughs, feeling light and a little dizzy and a little scared. “What?” he says, searching still for the right words to describe whatever it is he’s finding himself falling into. “You?”

Feitan looks at Phinks like he’s maybe a little dense, like there’s something right in front of him that he’s not getting, and Phinks wants desperately to know what it is but he knows that he can’t ask because it’s something Feitan would never give him, not like that. 

“Whenever have I not been?” Feitan asks, his voice soft and low, and he looks at Phinks for one more long moment, sharp eyes trying to find something that Phinks isn’t sure is even there. And then Feitan takes two steps back and turns away to poke at their bonfire, saying as he does so, “I’ll take first watch. You should get some rest.”

Phinks stares wordlessly, unable to move or think or even breathe properly, still trying to catch his breath from whatever this all was. A test, maybe? But what could he possibly have to prove now that he hasn’t already proven time and time again? All he knows is that his heart is still pounding in his chest like it might never stop, and he can’t stop thinking about the feeling of Feitan’s body pressed against his, the feeling of Feitan’s fingers running through his hair, and he feels a little like a bubble ready to pop. He has no idea what Feitan was looking for when he started this all, but Phinks thinks that maybe he’s stumbled closer to his own answer. And it’s this — that he knows, without knowing how or why or what exactly to call this feeling shifting under his skin, that if this were to happen again, it would be the end of him, and it horrifies him because isn’t this the opposite of everything he’s supposed to be? He’s a thief, at the end of the day, no matter how dressed up the act gets, and thieves can’t afford to have the sort of attachments that could sink them. But he looks at Feitan and his whole body hurts and he knows, without a doubt, that he was right all along, from the moment they worked that first real job together. Feitan really will kill him someday. 

\---

The problem, in the end, is that Phinks never really learned how to handle any sort of real closeness. He is, in the end, a little too much like a wild animal still, wary and guarded about any slight kindness, because there’s the instinct that’s followed him around the world from Meteor City, to always watch the most closely those who are most kind, because he fears that the day he stops will be the day he dies. He’s a product of his environment, through and through, and save for the barest slivers of memories of a family he thinks he can dredge up sometimes in the very latest moments of the night, he has no idea what it feels like to cared for. And even then, the memories feel suffocating, like they’ll suck him into a spiral he can’t get out of. It’s why, maybe, he’s never been good at figuring out anything about himself – what he’s feeling, what he wants, what he hopes for. It’s why, maybe, it’s still so surprising to him sometimes, in between the familiarity and the comfort of something solid and certain, that there’s even one person out there that he doesn’t mind chasing all over the world. 

It’s why, he thinks sometimes, it feels like there’s this big black hole in the place where his heart should be, like he can shine all the light in the universe on it and he’d still never be able to see the shapes within. All he knows is what he can hold, what’s right in front of him, what he can touch with his hands. Everything else slips through his fingers like he’s trying to hold onto water or smoke. And all he’s left with is a chest full of feeling and no idea of what to make of it, of what to do about it. Because the making sense of the jumble of crossed wires that makes up the emotional weight of everything he’s been through, that takes practice. The only thing he’s ever practiced is running away from it all. 

When Phinks was younger and bolder and more oblivious to the idea that his own actions create consequences that he must, someday, ultimately deal with, no matter how far he runs — when he was younger, the running still worked. He could run for weeks on end, barely pausing to sleep or breathe, and he could leave behind anything he didn’t like until it was a speck on the horizon. But he’s older now, and he’s realizing that everything always comes back around, that part of being an adult is running headlong up against the things that can’t be put off any longer, and he’s not sure if he’s equipped to handle any of it. Because he grew up, but somewhere along the way, he thinks he missed the lesson on what growing up really means. He feels like he’s stumbling blindly through a minefield, trying to sort out all of his thoughts and feelings into different piles. Good things. Bad things. Things he never wants to forget. Things he doesn’t understand. 

He’s taking stock, maybe, finally, and he’s realizing that there’s more to it than just the doing of things. There’s the part of it that’s maybe something bigger. 

\---

Returning again to Meteor City in the wake of the crisis created by invading Chimera Ants comes as a shock to the senses after being away for so long. The dusty streets are both familiar and foreign to Phinks, and even after they deal with the self-proclaimed Queen that set up shop in the city, even after they’re thanked profusely for helping to end the crisis that’s engulfed the area, it still doesn’t quite feel like he belongs here anymore. It’s like he’s outgrown it all, like he’s raced ahead while the city stayed exactly the same way it’s always been, and he can’t find where he fits into it all anymore. The thought hits him at a weird angle, and he spares a brief moment to wonder when that all happened, when he started to feel like an outsider even among a city of outsiders. 

As they all settle in for the night later that day, while the others are gossiping and trying to teach Kalluto (who’s so young and small it almost hurts because surely Phinks was never so tiny – except he was, he knows, and he can’t tell if that makes it better or worse) how to play Hearts, Phinks feels an odd sort of unease start to set up shop in the pit of his stomach. He’d been half-joking earlier when he’d issued the challenge for leadership. He’d said it without thinking, because it’d just been the first thing that came to mind, because after all these years, it feels almost strange to run into a fight with nothing at stake. But after the dust had settled, after the uninjured among them had made clothing and supply runs, after they’d found a place to spend the night, he wonders if maybe he should’ve just kept his mouth shut.

All night, Feitan sits off to the side instead of joining any of the games, backed up against a corner of the building where he has a clear view of everything and everyone, paging quietly through a book and still cradling his left arm gingerly. It’ll be fine by morning, Phinks knows, because he’d helped Feitan set the bone earlier and it was a clean break in the end, but Phinks can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Feitan get anywhere close to seriously injured, and there’s always something a little off-putting about seeing him like this. Maybe it’s just the contrast with the intensity of his anger from earlier. Maybe it’s just that Phinks has never gotten the chance to get used to it. 

But this time, there’s something else on top of that, something that makes Phinks second guess what he’d bet earlier that day. There’s something a little twitchy and restless about the way Feitan holds himself, like he hasn’t gotten all his energy out yet, like there’s something bothering him. He sits with his legs crossed and a book in his lap and he’s almost entirely still, and to anyone else, probably nothing would seem out of the ordinary, but Phinks eyes the way he keeps tapping a finger against his book as he reads, the way his eyes dart back and forth like he keeps losing his place and has to double back. It’s almost like he’s anxious about something, except that he’s not really the type to _do_ anxious, and it makes the air around Phinks feel stifling and heavy. 

“Hey,” Phinks says softly after the _tap-tap-tap_ of Feitan’s finger starts to ring in his ears and rattle in his chest until he can’t stand it anymore. When Feitan looks up, his eyes just this side of too carefully controlled, Phinks inclines his head towards the door and offers, “Grab a smoke?”

Feitan stares at him for a long moment, like he’s hesitating, like he’s considering maybe saying no, but then he nods once, a little stiffly, and says, “Sure.”

The air outside is cool and crisp, and the full moon shines silvery rays out across the city, and as Phinks kicks a crate over so he can sit down, he thinks, not for the first time, that despite everything, despite the bad memories and the fear and the mad scramble to just survive every day in this hellhole, there are times when the city is almost beautiful. The cool lighting reflects off of the sparse smattering of buildings and the piles of junk, making it all look almost translucent, like it could all be made of ice or glass. It’s times like these that make him wonder, just a little bit, what his life might’ve been like if he’d never left all of this behind. 

Phinks lights a cigarette and looks up at Feitan, who’s digging the toe of his shoe into the dirt and frowning down at the ground like there’s something he can’t figure out. Feitan’s face catches the dim ambient light, long shadows cast out behind him, and he still hasn’t quite held still for even a moment since they left the Chimera Ant nest. His fingers twitch and he keeps tapping his foot against the ground, and Phinks thinks of all the times Feitan has rolled his eyes at the way Phinks always starts to fidget like a child when told to stay in one place for too long, and Phinks feels a barbed something press against his lungs. He hasn’t really been alone with Feitan since they left Greed Island behind, and he’s almost managed to convince himself that the almost unbearable ache in his chest was just something he dreamed up, something he’d created out of nothing in response to the chaos that they’d just made it through in Yorknew ( _transference_ , he thinks, and knows this time it’s a lie), but as he watches the uncertainty unfold on Feitan’s face, luminous in the pale nighttime light, he knows that could never have been the case. He knows that he’d just been running away again from something he doesn’t understand.

“Regretting becoming the boss already?” Phinks asks, trying to keep his voice light over the heaviness in his chest, trying to get Feitan’s eyebrows to unfurrow. 

Feitan’s eyes flick up to meet Phinks’ and the corner of his mouth twitches just slightly like he’s considering offering up a laugh, and Phinks allows himself a quiet moment of pride. But then Feitan asks, and his voice sounds less certain and more tentative than Phinks has maybe ever heard him, “Can I ask you something?”

It makes Phinks’ heart stop, and he just nods, almost afraid to speak around the lump that’s risen in his throat, almost afraid that his own voice will betray him ( _but betray what?_ he thinks and still can’t quite pin it down).

“Do you feel it?” Feitan asks softly, his gaze sharp. “The way it feels like we’re all walking on thin ice?”

Phinks lets out a long breath, feeling the swell of anxiety deflate, just a bit. He doesn’t know why he feels like he was bracing himself for something worse. He smiles, a little sadly he’s sure, and says, “Yeah, like this could all fall apart any day now?”

The pointed look in Feitan’s eyes softens, but the way his expression pinches just so doesn’t quite leave. He sighs and looks up at the smattering of stars scattered across the night sky.

“Then no,” he says, but it sounds a little like he’s trying to convince himself of something. “No, I don’t regret it.”

And even though he says this, there’s something very troubled about the way he’s holding himself, like he’s been wrestling with something unnamed all night. Without his bandana to obscure his face, he looks oddly open, like maybe there was a reason he decided to spend his entire adult life hiding behind a mask. It’s been a long time since Phinks has seen, really seen, Feitan without something covering his mouth for any extended period of time, and Phinks thinks to himself that Feitan seems more emotive than Phinks remembers from back when they first started out, the way his posture tilts to one side like the imbalance in their lives is bleeding into even the way he holds himself, the way he stares unblinkingly at some invisible middle distance like the thing he’s looking for will disappear the instant his eyes close. Or maybe, Phinks thinks, he’s just gotten better at reading the signs, at knowing what it means when Feitan’s mouth twists down and to one side in a crooked frown, when he has to curl his hands into fists to get them to stay still. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Feitan says, and it sounds like a confession. Phinks almost holds his breath as Feitan continues, “About this. The Troupe. What we do. How we do it.” Feitan takes a deep breath like he’s bracing himself for what he says next. “And I think… I think Chrollo was wrong.”

Phinks freezes, stunned, and the silence in the space between them fills his ears like with cotton. He’s caught halfway between being indignant that anyone would say something like that about the boss and being completely bowled over by the fact that it’s coming from Feitan, who he’s never once heard or seen do anything that could be remotely construed as disagreeing with Chrollo, who he’s seen almost come to blows with others for even insinuating as much. Feitan’s eyes are unsettled when they meet Phinks’, and Phinks suddenly feels a little like an accomplice in something untoward. He thinks to himself that maybe all the jitteriness from earlier wasn’t unearned after all. 

“We were all supposed to be autonomous, right?” Feitan says slowly, like he’s measuring out the words. “Like independent contractors. We come together for the big things, but otherwise operate completely separately.” He swallows like he’s forcing himself to say all of this out loud, like he can barely stand it. “That was the plan. That was _Chrollo’s_ plan. But every day, I’m less sure that it ever could’ve worked. It’s not sustainable.”

Phinks lets out a shaky breath, his mind racing, trying to keep up with where Feitan is going with this, but it’s like he’s operating blind and everything Feitan says is like another punch in the gut out of nowhere. 

“What are you talking about?” Phinks says, his voice teetering on the edge between anger and fear. 

Feitan smiles, this small, pained thing like he’s been watching his own world slowly come apart at the seams for months now, quietly and privately and alone. Phinks wonders why he didn’t say anything sooner. He wonders how he can say anything now. 

“The way this all works, the autonomy, the way we’re not supposed to see each other, really, except on the job — it’s all supposed to protect us,” Feitan says, so quietly that it’s barely above a whisper, but it still feels too loud in Phinks’ ears. Feitan reaches out and taps the spot on Phinks’ chest where he knows Phinks’ tattoo is, the promise he made to the lot of them all those years ago, and Feitan says, “It’s supposed to protect the Spider. But the more I think about it, the more I think we were foolish for thinking it could ever be that clean. Human beings can’t spend this much time together and not get attached. People don’t work that way.”

Phinks feels his heart racing, hammering against the spot where Feitan’s hand lingers, and he thinks about the brittleness that he’s felt all around him since they left Yorknew. He thinks about Nobunaga’s fierce anger and how Machi’s quieter and colder now than she’s ever been and the way that even Shalnark’s unflappable cheer has felt just a little more strained lately. He thinks about the way Pakunoda’s memories still bounce around his skull as he tries to sleep at night like a ghost that’ll never leave him and the faintest hint of hesitation that he’s noticed in all of their movements in the moments when they think no one else is looking. He looks at the way Feitan’s hand trembles, just slightly, as he reaches to take Phinks’ cigarette, the way his breath sounds thin and shaky as he exhales a cloud of smoke into the night air. 

“What are you saying?” Phinks says, hating the helplessness creeping into the edges of his voice but unable to stop the dread that’s settling in his stomach. He almost isn’t sure what exactly they’re talking about anymore, what _he’s_ thinking of when he says, “That this is all over? That we’re finished?”

Feitan looks at Phinks, and Phinks suddenly feels like his heart is made of glass. The look in Feitan’s eyes is at once sad and almost pitying but also somehow still filled with a sort of desperate determination, like he’ll go down kicking and screaming till the last possible moment. He smiles a little, something that may have been aiming for reassuring in better times but now is mostly just for show, and Phinks thinks about the early days, about the way that Feitan’s expression would darken at the mere mention of the possibility that he could ever need anyone else for anything. He thinks about the way that Feitan used to live by the letter of the law in all this, the way he used to show up with a sort of clinical detachment, all cold efficiency and careful distance. He thinks about all of this and wonders when that all went away, when it all faded into the background of his life like a forgotten memory, and he wonders how he didn’t notice it happening before. The Feitan standing in front of him now is nothing like the kid he’d met a lifetime ago in Meteor City, but it all happened so slowly that each time Phinks crossed paths with Feitan, whatever pattern they fell into felt like how it had always been, how it always will be. But he’s reminded, suddenly, that there was never any promise of always. That this was never meant to be a place to make friends. 

“Only if we’re not careful,” Feitan says softly, deliberately. “The good news is being careful is one thing I’m good at. And with any luck, it’ll be enough.”

Phinks hears the slight shade of uncertainty still lingering in Feitan’s voice but says nothing. He’s suddenly glad he wasn’t the one to find the Chimera Ant Queen, because that means he’s not the leader, and if he’s not the leader then he doesn’t have to do the worrying for the lot of them; he only needs to wait to be told if and when it’s time to start. He wonders if he would’ve thought of everything that Feitan has clearly been turning over and over in his mind for some time now. He doesn’t know what he would’ve done. 

Feitan lets out a long breath, dropping the cigarette on the ground and crushing it under his boot. Something shifts like he’s drawing everything back into himself, like he’s trying to reign in all the pieces he’s maybe mistakenly let tumble out. 

“We should go back inside,” he says, like it’s a suggestion only, except that now it almost has to be a little more than that. “You should get some rest.”

Phinks frowns. “You should too,” he says, looking at the slump of Feitan’s shoulders and the dark circles threatening to form under his eyes.

Feitan smiles and shakes his head a little. “Someone has to keep watch,” he says, and the way he says it is not unkind but leaves no room for negotiation. “Besides, I still have another day or two in me. I’m fine.”

 _Not with that arm, you don’t_ , Phinks thinks as he stands to follow Feitan back inside, eyeing the way Feitan rubs at the sore spot and grimaces. But he doesn’t say anything, because he can’t, and he knows it’s an argument he would never win anyways. 

\---

Phinks knows, knows it intimately, that spending their lives completely separate of each other unless a job calls for it is the way it’s supposed to be. It’s what they all signed on for and it had been a part of the appeal in the beginning. Do the work when it’s needed but no need to get weighed down by the lives and concerns of others. Simple. Easy. But it’s been happening less and less as the years have gone by that Phinks finds himself truly alone for any stretch of time. And sure, he works odd jobs by himself, looking for artifacts and trinkets only he cares about, but it’s always just one-off things. Short-term. He always knows that someone else is on the horizon. 

When they all agree after helping Nobunaga deal with his problem that it’s probably a good idea to split up for a while, because it’s probably been too long that they’ve spent together and it’s always been safer to keep a little distance, Phinks finds himself a little off-kilter, a little uncertain. He looks around and all he sees these days are foreign faces, and he thinks sometimes about something Feitan said to him once – that people only know who they are because other people know too – and he wonders if that’s why he feels a little lost. 

He kills some time in the Begerossé Union chasing a few leads on the missing pieces of a few of his collections, but it quickly loses its appeal, and after a handful of days, he’s at the northernmost tip of the country, looking out across the ocean and wondering what he should do next. He finds himself getting restless and bored and there’s this ache in his chest again like he’s looking for something he can’t even see. He wonders how long it’ll be before he does something stupid. 

He hops across the ocean to Ochima and then gets bored _there_ and keeps moving north to Kakin, and he’s just running and running and running aimlessly, like he doesn’t know what to do anymore now that he’s on his own again. He wanders from city to city, feeling entirely unmoored, and the ache in his chest blooms into something overwhelming, like if he doesn’t find shelter from it soon, it’ll be the end of him. And the problem is, still, that he’s not equipped to handle it, that he still can’t get to the root of what bothers him so much when he doesn’t have anything else to distract him. 

He winds up in a little market along Kakin’s eastern shore by the time the text comes to call him back to everyone. He’s browsing a little mindlessly, mostly just trying to find something to do or something interesting to take home with him, maybe to just to be able to say that this whole trip wasn’t a waste, and he realizes suddenly that without meaning to, he’s wound up in a place Feitan told him about years and years ago. He remembers making fun of Feitan for the ridiculous bandana that’s by now become a part of his signature look, the bandana that’s now been torn to shreds and that he almost certainly hasn’t been able to find a replacement for yet, and he remembers Feitan rolling his eyes in response and somewhere along the way mentioning in an offhand sort of way where he’d found it ( _A market in Kakin, by the port. I liked it, so I took it_ ). Phinks himself has never been here before, has never had a reason to, and he doesn’t really have a reason to now. It’s probably a coincidence that he’s ended up here without even thinking about it, and it’s probably silly to read too much into it. 

But all the same, there’s something about it that feels significant somehow, like things are starting come full circle, things that Phinks can’t avoid anymore, things he’s going to have to learn, finally, how to deal with. It feels maybe like this is the beginning of how he finally grows up, like maybe he’s been given another chance to learn what it means to be a human being. It makes him feel unsteady and precarious, and he thinks to himself that maybe it’s time to stop fighting it so hard. Maybe that’s what he’s been pulled towards this entire time. And that’s why, when he stumbles upon a vendor in the market with various hand spun cloths and flowy shirts and colorful blankets, and he spots out of the corner of his eye a square of cloth with a pattern that almost suspiciously resembles the one on the bandana that Feitan just lost, Phinks almost laughs. He wonders where else in the world he’ll end up following Feitan to, knowingly or not. 

He buys the bandana without really thinking about it, because it feels like it would’ve been wrong somehow not to, and then he spends the entire trip to the coordinates he’d been texted feeling stupid and embarrassed. Several times on the way to meeting up with the rest of the Troupe, he almost considers getting rid of it, because just thinking about the fact that he actually bought it to give as a gift or something of the sort makes him feel just a little too vulnerable, and no one would have to know, besides. But he doesn’t, because he can’t quite make himself, because _he’d_ still know, and that’s what matters at the end of the day. 

( _Thank you_ , Feitan says later, when Phinks offers it to him, feeling almost too awkward to meet his gaze. And then Feitan says, _Where did you find this? I was sure the original vendor was dead._ It makes something seize in Phinks’ chest, and for a moment, he can’t breathe, suddenly horrified by the thought that maybe it seems like he’s trying too hard at something he can’t take back, but then Feitan grins a little at him and the softness in his eyes almost makes it all worth it.)

\---

When Chrollo returns, he calls them all in for a celebratory heist, and Phinks starts to feel a little like his life can start again. There’s a lightness in the air when he arrives at their base, a sort of excited buzz running through the chatter and the laughter of everyone catching up, and he thinks that this feels like finally coming home. He feels almost giddy, the tension that’s been living under his skin finally releasing, because somehow it feels, now, like things are going to be okay again. He marvels at the effect that one person can have on all of them, and he thinks back to that first time he met them all, remembering how he’d thought that there was probably no one else who could’ve pulled off bringing them together, different as they all are from each other. He’s so excited, in fact, that he almost misses the way Feitan makes a beeline for Chrollo the moment he arrives, completely disregarding anything else even when Shalnark calls out a greeting to him, the way that Feitan’s expression is still oddly pinched and anxious. 

Feitan’s shoulders look stiff as he and Chrollo talk in hushed tones in the far corner of the room, and there’s this strained look in Feitan’s eyes like it hurts him to even speak. Phinks remembers suddenly the conversation he’d had with Feitan on that last night in Meteor City, remembers the way Feitan’s voice broke around his words ( _Chrollo was wrong_ ), remembers the way Feitan had almost looked defeated in the wake of it all ( _it’s not sustainable_ ), and Phinks feels that ache in his chest again, hating the memory and hating the way Feitan’s whole being seems pulled taut like a thread ready to snap and hating that he can’t make it stop. Phinks watches nervously out of the corner of his eye, feeling his high spirits slowly fade, and he’s not even sure what he’s looking for, what he’s so afraid of, but as he watches the way Feitan stands in front of Chrollo, head slightly bowed and hiding behind his bandana like he needs anything that’ll give him just a little distance — as Phinks watches, he feels the exhilaration in his veins leave only to be replaced with something akin to dread. 

It’s like that for several minutes, Feitan and Chrollo murmuring over what seems like some awful secret, Phinks pretending not to watch the whole thing unfold, and his friends, whoever among them have noticed the anxiety building in him (he suspects Machi the most, and maybe Shizuku) thankfully, uncharacteristically quiet about it. He supposes he should be grateful for even that small kindness, but all he can focus on is the way Feitan’s shoulders suddenly drop, like the strings holding them almost up to his ears have suddenly been cut, and Feitan’s whole demeanor changes to some kind of calm Phinks has never seen before. He watches as Chrollo smiles and Feitan’s eyes widen at something Chrollo said, like he’s being shown something for the first time, like he’s been told some kind of secret that’s been hiding right in front of his eyes. There’s something in the sharp lines of his face that almost looks like wonder, and Phinks almost can’t bear not knowing anymore, almost loses his bearings enough to let himself storm over and demand answers, but then the two of them approaching the group, and there’s an air of finality about the way Feitan follows Chrollo over, and Phinks knows that saying anything would be a bad idea. 

Phinks manages to catch Feitan’s eye as Chrollo starts telling them all about the job he’s got planned like old times, and the look in Feitan’s eyes almost startles him. It’s at once lost and wrecked and yet maybe the most hopeful Phinks has ever seen him, and Phinks doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of it. And then Feitan looks away and by the time he looks back, the moment has passed, his eyes set with nothing but fierce determination as he listens to what Chrollo is saying, and Phinks is left wondering if he’s maybe starting to read too much into things. 

\---

After Chrollo returns, it’s like Feitan unspools completely. There’s a looseness to the way he holds himself while they’re working, like everything has become effortless in a way that it never was before. There’s something almost settled about him, like he’s found solid ground again, and Phinks would just think it’s all because the boss is back and they can all breathe easy again knowing that the Spider will live another day, except that there’s a deliberateness to Feitan’s steps like he’s made some kind of important decision, something that faces inwards, something for himself only. Phinks wants to ask, feeling a little like an outsider for the first time in so, so long, but there’s something about it all that feels distant, like Feitan is at once letting go of his moorings and drawing into himself, like he’s locking away some newly-won victory deep in his heart so it’ll never leave, and it feels like asking would be an intrusion, somehow. 

When the job ends and everyone’s chatting and laughing over drinks, it takes Phinks maybe a moment too long to notice that Feitan has disappeared. They’ve spent less time together in the intervening weeks than they’ve gotten in the habit of, and he’s out of practice keeping track of Feitan. Without really thinking about it, he wanders up the crumbling stairs of the vacant building they’ve taken over for the time being, knowing that if Feitan hasn’t run off, he’ll be up here somewhere. He’s always liked high up places. 

Phinks finds Feitan perched on a windowsill on the second floor, his legs dangling out into the nighttime air. The glass that must’ve been there in better times is, as with all the windows of the building, long gone and the chilly breeze sweeps in, filling the space with a kind of quiet calm, the kind that you usually find in the wee hours of the morning, during those times when it’s not quite night anymore but it doesn’t feel like a new day yet. Phinks had thought, maybe, that Feitan had disappeared to do something — read a book he’d been meaning to get to or follow up on some missed messages about whatever he’s planning on doing next — but instead, Phinks finds Feitan just sitting, quietly, staring out into the murky night like he’s trying to find something in the darkness. It’s almost peaceful, in a way, but something about it sets Phinks’ teeth on edge. 

“Hey,” Phinks says softly as he walks over. He leans his elbows on the windowsill next to Feitan. “Shal’s trying to rally people to start a game of poker. You want in?”

Feitan doesn’t look at him, but the faraway look on his face softens and Phinks thinks that Feitan might be smiling, just a little, behind his bandana. Feitan waves a hand vaguely by his head. 

“Migraine,” he says, the quiet lilt of his accent curling in around his words. He sounds tired, like he’s been trying too hard at something. “Thought the fresh air would help but no dice.”

Phinks frowns, studying the pinch in Feitan’s eyebrows. He wonders how he didn’t notice sooner, wonders if it’s even something he should’ve known. Feitan glances over at Phinks then and shifts to sit with one leg still dangling out the window and the other folded under him, back pressed against the window frame as he stares back at Phinks. Feitan doesn’t say anything, just meets Phinks’ gaze with a sort of unfocused intensity, and Phinks looks away, fumbling around in his pocket for a cigarette, needing some kind of distraction. They sit in silence for a long moment, and Phinks can feel the weight of Feitan’s eyes on him as he breathes out a cloud of smoke into the crisp air outside. He feels like he should say something, anything really, except that he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so awkward about it. He wonders when the silences between them started to feel so loaded, so expectant. He wonders if he’s just imagining it. 

Phinks is brought back into himself by the feeling of Feitan’s hand brushing against his as Feitan reaches to pluck the cigarette out from between Phinks’s fingers. Phinks stares as Feitan takes a long drag, feeling suddenly restless and antsy. 

“You know those things will kill you,” Phinks says, and he doesn’t really mean anything by it, doesn’t even know why he says it other than to say something to fill the space that’s starting to feel just too heavy. 

Feitan’s mouth pulls up into a sly smirk. “Yeah?” he says, and the tone of his voice is soft and low and Phinks feels a little like his fingers are filling with static electricity. “Well then, I hope to god something else takes me out first.”

Phinks hears himself laugh without really meaning to, the sound bubbling up before he even realizes it. It leaves behind something warm in his chest, something that makes him feel a little bold. 

“I’d do it,” he says, not really knowing what he’s saying but unable to stop himself, “If you wanted.”

Feitan stares at Phinks for a moment, and Phinks has just enough time to start internally freaking out that maybe that was a weird thing to say, that maybe that was finally crossing some unspoken line, but then Feitan lets out a soft laugh, his eyes turning almost warm, and Phinks feels the tension release in his chest. 

“That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Feitan says, a sort of crooked grin pulling at the corners of his mouth like he’s teasing Phinks, just a little. 

The warm feeling creeps up Phinks’ throat, making the air feel thick, and he has to look away again, feeling a little like he’s been staring at the sun for just a minute too long. From the floor below, the sound of laughter and shouting floats up. Shalnark must’ve gotten enough people interested in some card games after all. 

“Where are you headed next?” Phinks asks, casting out for a plan, for something to do after this job. He knows they’ll scatter in a couple days’ time, and he fears most being listless and bored again. 

Feitan shrugs. “I’m supposed to meet someone in Zazan in a few days.” 

There’s a slight hitch in Feitan’s voice, a break so minute that maybe anyone else would’ve written it off as just a trick of the mind. But Phinks hears it, hears the way Feitan hesitates just slightly around his words, careful and deliberate, and it makes Phinks’ bones start to ache. 

“Alone?” Phinks asks, because he knows by now what the little things mean, most of them anyways. 

Feitan stills entirely and pins Phinks with an inquisitive look, like he’s searching for the answer to the question in the lines on Phinks’ face. 

“Yeah,” Feitan says finally. 

The single sharp syllable hits Phinks like a knife in the gut. And the thing is, he knows it’s his own damn fault, the way he never really has any future mapped out in front of him, the way he always finds himself scrambling to get purchase on the next thing he’ll do, and he doesn’t quite know how to articulate this feeling, like he’s falling behind, like if he blinks he’ll miss something important. Maybe it’s just that he’s gotten too used to getting swept up in other people’s (in _Feitan’s_ ) plans. Maybe that’s why the rare occasions he’s left completely to his own devices he feels like he can’t find solid ground. He wants to ask if he can come along, if he’s welcome, but it feels whiny and childish and Phinks has never really made the effort to invite himself along to anything, really, anyways. It’s just an assumption at this point, that if the invitation isn’t extended to him then whatever this is must be a personal thing, something private, something that needs to be dealt with alone. But it doesn’t stop the way his chest feels two sizes too small and it doesn’t get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth and he hates it. He hates feeling helpless and he hates that even as an adult he doesn’t know how to handle even the thought of isolation and he hates that he knows it’s all made worse by the fact that it’s Feitan leaving him behind. And most of all, he hates that he can’t quite figure out why this whole thing bothers him so much. 

Some part of Phinks’ racing thoughts must show on his face, because when Feitan next speaks, his words come out quiet and almost gentle, almost pitying. 

“Can you do me a favor?” he asks, and he’s got this odd, cautious look on his face. “You still owe me one.”

Phinks feels his heart skip a beat, startled and suddenly anxious. He nods. “Sure,” he says, wondering what could possibly be so important, what could possibly warrant a no-questions-asked request. “Of course.”

Feitan draws in a breath, and Phinks could swear it shakes, just a touch. Feitan’s mouth curves up into a small smile, something almost sad, and Phinks barely hears what he says next over the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears. 

“Don’t ask me why you can’t come,” Feitan says, and Phinks feels that mysterious something in his chest splinter. Feitan looks down at his hands. 

For a moment, Phinks can’t find his voice, can’t summon the wherewithal to say anything in response even though he knows he should, because he feels suddenly winded in the face of Feitan’s words. He feels a little like he’s being made an outsider in his own life, and it throws him all the way back to being that scared kid, terrified of being abandoned, terrified of dying alone. He feels suddenly very small, and it baffles him, in a way, because they’d never promised each other that they’d always take the other along, because it’s just something that happened, because Feitan has every right to spend time on his own if that’s what he wants. And the logical part of Phinks knows this, knows that it’d be unfair to kick up a fuss, favor or not, but it doesn’t stop the desperation in his chest either. 

“Yeah,” Phinks says finally, after the silence has stretched on for maybe a moment too long. “Yeah, okay.”

Feitan looks back up at him, and his expression is uncharacteristically unguarded and open. He looks almost sorry for asking for anything (and Phinks wants to yell, wants to demand answers, because why would he do something he’s ultimately going to want to take back?), like he’s trying to tell Phinks that he does have his reasons, like he’s trying to tell Phinks that he’d say if he could. But he doesn’t, and then Feitan takes a breath and turns to look back out at the cloudy nighttime sky and his expression shifts into something a little calmer, a carefully curated neutral. He’s gotten better at that over the years, Phinks thinks, remembering that one night from so long ago when he saw Feitan crumble for the first time. And then he remembers everything else too, the way Feitan had held onto him like he was dry land, the way Feitan had kissed him like he was trying to find the answers to all the questions in the universe, and it makes Phinks’ whole body hurt just thinking about it, so he shoves the memory away, stuffing it back into that box of things in his mind full of everything he’s never really been able to confront. 

(It’s been a long time, he suddenly realizes, since Feitan last kissed him, and he’s almost shocked to find that the thought leaves a sharp feeling in the pit of his stomach.)

“Want me to get you a souvenir?” Feitan asks, his voice light and smooth again, like nothing’s happened. He tilts his head to one side and eyes Phinks a little playfully like he’s trying to break through the tension encasing him. “I’m meeting a weapons dealer. I could bring you a cool, old-timey revolver.”

Phinks laughs, but it’s almost on instinct alone, the muscle memory taking over where his conscious mind can’t. He stares at Feitan, feeling a little like he’s talking through a thick fog. 

“I seem like the kind of guy who gives a shit about guns?” he asks. 

Feitan’s mouth curls into a soft smile, something tender and maybe a little fond, like he was looking for that reaction. It makes him look like he could almost be kind, even though no one would believe Phinks if he ever said as much, least of all Feitan. Phinks wonders if he himself would even have believed it if someone had told him, years and years ago when they’d first met, that Feitan was capable of this kind of gentleness. 

Feitan leans forward a little, and Phinks is suddenly very aware of how close they are to each other, Feitan hovering less than a foot away from him. 

“Okay,” Feitan says quietly. “Then what do you want?”

There’s something about Feitan’s voice that settles under Phinks’ skin like it’ll never leave, and all of a sudden, Phinks gets the distinct feeling they’re talking about something else altogether. There’s a slight lilt to Feitan’s voice, a slight edge in his eyes like he’s looking for something, and Phinks has no idea what that could possibly be. It feels like he’s being tested again and he missed the whole class, and for a brief second, Phinks can’t breathe. 

“I don’t know,” he says, and he doesn’t miss the lightning quick flash of something a little sorry and sad that flits across Feitan’s face. 

“That’s too bad,” Feitan murmurs, and he’s still so, so close to Phinks, and Phinks almost lets himself wonder if Feitan is going to kiss him. Phinks shivers. 

But then Feitan is straightening up and he flicks the cigarette out the window to land somewhere on the ground below and he swings both legs back inside. He hops down from his perch and shoves his hands in his pockets, ducking his head a little like maybe he’s cold, like maybe he’s hiding. 

“I’m going to bed,” he says as he turns to find somewhere quiet, away from the commotion downstairs. He looks at Phinks out of the corner of his eye with something Phinks can’t name, but the closest thing Phinks can think of is disappointment. “See if I can’t sleep off this headache.”

And all Phinks can do is nod, because he doesn’t quite understand what just happened. He feels like he’s grasping at the threads of something just out of reach, like if he just stretched out enough he could maybe get a hold on it. He wonders if he’ll ever feel like he can stop chasing Feitan. He wonders if he’d even want to, given the chance. There must be some satisfaction in being able to hold onto something firm, but there’s a part of him that fears that if he tries and it slips through his fingers anyways, he’ll be swallowed whole by the hollowness always hot on his heels, and he’s not sure what’s worse – this limbo or being trapped in an endless downward spiral.

\---

It takes five weeks before Phinks caves and texts Feitan, ready to admit, maybe, at least to himself that he’s getting a little lonely, and it probably says something about him that it still takes that long for him to be pushed to the brink (he spends probably fifteen minutes too long composing a text that basically amounts to _hey are you free and do you want to meet up_ , and that probably says something about him too). It takes five weeks of being left alone with nothing but his own thoughts and that image of Feitan’s disappointed expression the night he left to replay every last interaction he’s ever had with Feitan over and over in his mind, trying to untangle the jumble of wires that makes up his history with Feitan, trying to come out with something he can begin to understand. It takes five weeks for that all too familiar ache in his chest to become so overwhelming he can barely breathe, can barely sleep at night, and when he does, he dreams that same dream, of running and running and running, chasing after something just out of reach only to have the ground drop out from under him — only as the days stretch into weeks into more than a month, the sound filling Phinks’ ears as he wakes with a jolt is unmistakable, that soft, airy laugh that Phinks thinks he’d recognize anywhere, even at the end of the world. He wakes with the phantom feeling of heavy eyes on him, following him all this time all the way from Meteor City, and Feitan’s laughter ringing in his ears, high and bright and agonizing. 

_You were my ghost_ , he realizes with a rush when he wakes up the morning he finally decides to end the stalemate with Feitan that he’s not sure he’s just imagining anymore. He stares up at the ceiling of the derelict factory he’s been camping out in, completely floored, realizing that that the way everything’s shaken out is so much stranger and more confusing and just _more_ than anything he ever could’ve dreamed up as a kid. There’s this feeling tugging at his chest like his body is trying to tell him that even if everything else falls apart, there’s a center to his whole world, a ground zero that he’ll always find himself returning to. And maybe this is the thing he’s been chasing his whole life, trying to figure out where in the world that could possibly be, only to realize too many years later that it’s not a place but a person.

He realizes that he’s probably always been looking in the wrong places and asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers, and even now that he knows that every decision in his life has maybe been pointing him squarely, eventually, at Feitan, he’s not sure what to do with that. He doesn’t know if this is something he’s allowed to have or even want, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe the knowing is enough. And even if it isn’t, maybe it’ll have to be. After all, this was never supposed to be the kind of place to go looking for things like belonging or home or love. 

\---

There’s a bolthole that Phinks keeps in the far reaches of the Yorbian continent, buried deep in the woods in a stretch of mountains that’s all but uninhabited, save for the occasional adventurous backpacker. It’s a safehouse he’s had for years, bought with cash under an assumed name, and it’s maybe, in his more whimsical moments, the only place in the world that he’s ever call truly his. He’s never told anyone about it, not even to acknowledge that it exists, and he’s the only person who’s ever set foot in it, which is why, when he gets back from running some errands in the middle of a brief visit to check up on things, he starts when he feels the distinct feeling of someone else’s presence in his space. His hands ball into fists on instinct as he whirls around, adrenaline spiking and itching to fight, and then he stops cold, feeling a little like he’s been dunked in a pool of ice water. 

Perched on a windowsill of the living room, framed by the golden wash of late afternoon light that streams into the house, is Feitan. The halo of light around him makes him seem soft and almost blurry at the edges, like he’s left behind the sharpness he keeps under his skin with his last job, and Phinks feels his heart lurch in his chest. Save for Feitan’s windswept, slightly tangled hair and the a lone leaf clinging to the shoulder of his coat betraying the journey it’s taken to get here, Feitan almost looks like he belongs somehow, like he’s always been here, alongside Phinks’ collection of first edition books and rare coins from all over the world and the set of Ben’s knives he’s managed to amass over the years. Phinks can’t tell if that’s just a trick of the mind, if all the things he’s been working on getting comfortable with admitting to himself are bleeding into how he sees the world. He gapes, heart in his throat, and can’t find the right words to say. 

Feitan arches an eyebrow at Phinks, mildly amused. “This is cozy,” he says by way of greeting, making a show of looking around the room.

Phinks blinks, his voice suddenly rushing up to his mouth. “How did you find this place?” he asks, half because it’s the first thing he surprised mind comes up with and half because there’s a little part of him that worries that maybe he’s gotten sloppy, that maybe he’s left a trail behind him that he shouldn’t have. 

Feitan shrugs. “Educated guess,” he offers, just left of a real answer. He looks expectantly at Phinks. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

A startled laugh slips out from Phinks’ throat. “You’re asking that after you’ve broken into my house?” he says, hoping the lilt in his voice comes out as teasing rather than something embarrassing like fond, because there are things that he’s begun to admit to himself but that doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to admit any of it to anyone else, especially when said person is a knife shaped into a human being. 

When Feitan doesn’t respond, waiting, not rising to the bait in the way they’ve both gotten so good at doing, Phinks sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“Fine,” he says, waving his hand vaguely in a gesture of welcome and moves in the direction of the kitchen, “Fine, do you, I don’t know, want a drink or something?”

A small smile curves Feitan’s eyes just slightly into new moon arches across his face. “Sure,” he says and finally pushes himself up to stand. 

Phinks doesn’t have much in the house to offer except some beer he’d picked up the night he’d arrived here, but it’s cold at least and he has the distinct feeling that this is not what Feitan’s here for, anyways. Over his shoulder, he hears shuffling and the familiar _thunk_ of Feitan shrugging off his coat and setting down his things, and it feels so strangely _domestic_ that Phinks almost doesn’t know what to do with himself. When he turns around to hand Feitan a beer, he’s got something most likely stupid and sentimental right on the top of his tongue, but then his eyes land on the deep purple bruises blooming out high across Feitan’s left cheek and along the left edge of his jaw, starkly clear against his pale skin now that he’s taken off the dark clothing covering his face, and Phinks freezes, arm halfway extended towards Feitan. Feitan hoists himself up to sit on the kitchen counter across from Phinks and quirks an eyebrow at him, casually leaning across to take the bottle out of Phinks’ hand like it’s nothing, like this isn’t one of the only times Phinks has ever seen Feitan injured in his life. 

“Um,” Phinks says elegantly after the silence has stretched on for a moment too long. “What the hell happened to you?”

And Feitan, who’s just been sitting quietly and drinking his beer like he’s been waiting for something, looks blankly at Phinks for a second before he makes a face like he’s forgotten he’d gotten beaten up ( _oh_ ) and then shrugs. 

“It’s no big deal,” he says, and the way he says it makes Phinks suspect that there’s a non-zero chance that it actually is. He lifts the corner of his mouth into a smirk like it’s the punchline to some sly joke and not some most likely huge mess he’s had to drag himself out of, and he says, “Turns out, people don’t really like it when you decide to bail in the middle of a job.”

Phinks almost chokes on his own beer, and he sets it aside, coughing a little. “You _what_?” he blurts out, because he’s never known Feitan to be the type of person to not see something through to completion, even tedious things. Because Feitan’s not the type of person to leave behind loose ends like that. Because in their line of work, pissing off people who know what you look like is a surefire way to get killed. “ _Why_?”

Feitan shrugs again and looks away. “I was bored,” he says, idly kicking one of his legs. “Seemed like this would be more interesting.”

The way he says it, it’s like he’s trying to make it sound like it’s the obvious choice, like anyone would’ve done the same thing, but when Phinks listens carefully, he starts to wonder if maybe he’s hearing things, because Feitan’s voice sounds just a shade more tentative than Phinks is used to. He sits with his weight a little off-center and he’s frowning at his beer, picking absently at the label, and he’s got this air of such affected calm around him that Phinks feels a slight thread of anxiety creep up his spine. Phinks swallows, wondering why he suddenly feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff. 

“What if I wasn’t here?” Phinks asks, because it’s the only thing he can think of, because he still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Feitan ditched a job to come here, a place Feitan had no way of knowing that Phinks would actually be at, a place Feitan couldn’t have even been sure existed. “What if I’d already left?”

Feitan pins Phinks with an unimpressed look, like he’s missing the point. “I’m sure I would’ve figured it out eventually,” he says coolly, but there’s this edge to his voice that Phinks can’t place. 

It sounds like Feitan is trying to say something without saying it, and if Phinks really thinks about it, if he replays every conversation they’ve ever had, he thinks that maybe Feitan’s always sort of spoken this way, like everything he’s said has been a test. _Are you clever enough to understand?_ he seems to ask with everything he says. Or maybe just _do you know me well enough?_ And the problem is, Phinks has never really been good at this, at figuring out what it is Feitan’s trying to get at in this sideways manner of his, and it’s not that Phinks isn’t plenty clever himself. He likes to think that he’s always been smarter than people have given him credit for, that he can read people and situations like the words are plainly written in the sky, but there’s always been a part of Feitan that’s been a sort of blind spot for him, a black box that he can’t find the key for. There’s a part of him that hoped that coming to terms with his own jumble of thoughts and feelings surrounding Feitan would make things clearer, would let him see past the things that have always clouded his field of vision, but as he looks at Feitan, searching for any hint of the thing Feitan refuses to say, all he can hear is the sound of his own heartbeat picking up in his chest, drowning out everything else. 

“But why did you leave to come here?” Phinks asks again, hoping he doesn’t sound desperate, that he doesn’t sound more worried than he should for someone who was really only ever supposed to be just a close ally or maybe a friend on their best days. “Why take the risk?”

Feitan meets Phinks with steady eyes, determined like he’s squaring up for a fight, and he says, like this, too, is the most obvious thing in the world, “You asked me to.”

Phinks is about halfway to saying that he didn’t mean for Feitan to drop everything and come find him right this very instant, that it’s beyond stupid to have done what he’s done and doesn’t he know better than that, but then he listens to what Feitan’s just said and stops dead in his tracks. _You asked me to_ , Feitan says like that’s all it takes, all it would ever have taken, and Phinks finds himself wondering if it could possibly be that simple, if Feitan would’ve stayed any of the times that he ran off into the night alone if Phinks had just asked. Feitan has never once come running to follow Phinks around the world the way Phinks feels like he’s been doing for Feitan for almost as long as he can remember, but he’s realizing that maybe it’s because he’s always been a little scared that the answer to the question would be _no_. But here Feitan is, having clawed his way out of what Phinks is certain was a near-death experience, because Feitan doesn’t get injured for anything less, and he’s sitting in Phinks’ kitchen like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Phinks thinks about Feitan rushing across the world to find him, thinks about how he must’ve shown up to an empty home not knowing if he’d come to the right place, thinks about how Feitan could’ve been waiting for almost half the day for Phinks to get back from his errands. Phinks thinks about the disappointment on Feitan’s face months earlier in Yorknew over the fact that Phinks had been waiting, like a child, for things to just happen to him and the way that all he can see on Feitan’s face now is a sort of peace, a calmness like maybe he’s finally found the answers to some of the unspoken questions he’s been asking Phinks over the years. 

“You waited,” Phinks says, unable to stop the wonder from seeping into his voice. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Feitan says, like it couldn’t have been any other way. 

Feitan’s smiling at Phinks like Phinks has been a little stupid, a little dense, but the look is soft and fond in a way Phinks never could’ve imagined when they first met. He’s looking at Phinks like he could’ve waited forever if that’s what it would’ve taken, and Phinks has always known that Feitan’s got an almost endless supply of patience when it counts, but he’s never really considered that he’d ever be included as a given in any of that. He thinks about the person Feitan used to be, all those years ago, all sharp edges and a sort of untamed, wild restlessness like any wrong move could send him running, and he thinks about the Feitan he knows now, no less sharp and wild but more focused now in the way that he acts, more deliberate, more careful in how and when and towards whom he directs the violence that lives just under his skin. He thinks about the way Feitan used to look at him, like he was a burden to shoulder, like he was a necessary but reluctant means to an end, and he thinks about all the ways Feitan has looked at him in the past few months, years even, about the way that Feitan looks at him now like he wants to be seen, like he wants to be known instead of hiding all the many pieces of himself behind a carefully crafted veneer. 

_Of course_ , Phinks thinks to himself. _We grew up._

And it sounds silly to say but somewhere between all the running and dodging death and stealing a kind of life that was never meant to be his, he’s sort of lost sight of that fact, and he thinks, finally, that he’s found some clarity, that he’s figured out what he’s been searching for all this time, found the end of the rope. It’s finally in the palm of his hand instead of just out of reach, and he thinks, _Oh_. Thinks, _How long have you known and not said anything?_ Thinks, _How long have you been waiting for me to catch up to you?_

But the fact of the matter is that Feitan waited and he’s _been_ waiting, has decided that Phinks is worth waiting _for_ , and Phinks feels his heart leap into his throat. 

“I’m an idiot, aren’t I?” Phinks asks, and he thinks what he really means to say is _Please don’t leave again._

Feitan laughs softly, the corners of his eyes crinkling just so. “Just a little bit,” he says, and it sounds a little like he’s saying _Okay_. 

Feitan’s mouth twists into that crooked smile that Phinks realizes he’s missed so much it hurts, and it feels a little like a permission that Phinks has probably had for a very long time and just never realized, and he takes the two steps forward it takes to close the distance between them. Feitan tips his head up, expectant like he’s been waiting for Phinks to make the first move all this time, and Phinks lifts his hands to gingerly cup Feitan’s face, careful on his bruised jaw, and kisses him. Feitan’s lips feel soft and familiar against his own, and Feitan lifts his free hand to bunch into a fist in Phinks’ shirt, pulling Phinks closer to him. Feitan kisses Phinks like he’s starving for it, like he’d never stop if he didn’t have to, and he hooks his ankle casually around Phinks’ thigh, and Phinks feels the dam in his chest break wide open. 

Feitan’s grinning at him when he pulls away, something sly in the slant of his mouth as he absently smooths his hand over the wrinkles in Phinks’ shirt. “Finally figured out what you want?” he asks, like he already knows. 

Feitan’s voice is teasing like Phinks loves best instead of that odd, guarded tone from earlier, and Phinks laughs, breathless. He’s sure he has some kind of goofy, sappy smile on his face, but he can’t stop and he finds that he doesn’t want to, really. All he wants in the world is right here, and there’s probably no one he wouldn’t fight just to keep this for even just a moment longer. He thinks to himself that he’s so, so fucked, but for the first time in his life, it doesn’t bother him. For the first time in his life, it feels like that’s sort of the point, in the end. 

“Yeah,” Phinks says, and he’s never been more certain of anything in his life and it leaves him feeling light and giddy. “Yeah, I think so.”


	4. lynchpin (OR: coda)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is more like a cutscene than a coda tbh and like..... is it necessary to really understand the rest of it? not really. but did I have fun writing it? 100%
> 
> plus I just have lots of thoughts about all of this from fei's pov and well... here we are. think of it as a bonus I guess?

  
_“You show, in the middle of savage things (that I like), the gentleness of your heart, that is so full of pain and light.”_  
_— Federico García Lorca_  
  
  


“I have never once demanded that you give up being human,” Chrollo says to Feitan on the day he returns, when Feitan finishes laying bare every way he thinks that the way they’ve all been approaching the world is wrong, that the way _Chrollo_ is wrong. The whole time Chrollo hasn’t once looked angry or betrayed or any of the things that the most pessimistic part of Feitan expected, and instead, he listens intently, quietly, thoughtfully and Feitan finds that Chrollo looks a little like he’s confirming hunches that have been brewing for a long time.

“Each of us, in our own way, started this all because we all wanted to find something that would make it worth it to live another day,” Chrollo says, careful and even like he’s been rehearsing it in his head, like maybe he, too, has had the sinking suspicion in the wake of their lives being turned upside down that there’s something more to it than the price of gold. “I think that we’d be naïve to assume that the only things worth living for are material goods. Don’t you?”

And it’s not permission, per se, and Feitan never asks because he’s never admitted to anyone that he’s been hiding something soft and sentimental behind his ribcage for years now, this thing that he’d maybe call love if he thought of himself as someone capable of doing that, of receiving it in return, but it feels a little like he’s being absolved of his sins anyways. He’s harbored this thorn in his side for so long now that he can’t remember where it started (in Yorknew, when he thought their lives were ending, maybe. Or the six months before that when he’d left Phinks behind, testing. Or maybe before that, in between cities and stolen kisses in the dead of night, in between running from place to place, anonymous and secret and yet so, so known. Or maybe earlier still, in a city he has never called home, watching from afar as a boy with fear and ambition too big for his body fought his way out). It pricks at him when he least expects it, making his breath catch in his throat in the middle of fights, in the quiet lulls on airships between countries, in the brief moments before he falls asleep knowing that the person he trusts most in maybe the entire universe is keeping watch. 

It hurts, but not in the way that Feitan’s used to things hurting. It hurts the way his muscles hurt after he’s pushed himself too far, run too long in one go, this ache that tells him he’s growing and learning. A good hurt, mostly. 

On the night that he leaves for Zazan, he leaves behind a deliberate question for Phinks to find. _What do you want?_ Feitan had asked, but what he really meant to say was, _What do you want from me?_ Because it’s been years and years, and there’s a version of Feitan who was fine with the ambiguity of it all, fine with going wherever life took him, not really knowing what to call this thing that he finds himself doing with Phinks, coming back to each other again and again to take from the rich and give to themselves, to fall into bed together like it’s a logical necessity. Feitan hasn’t been that person for quite some time, but he’s held his tongue about it till now not because he wanted to but because unleashing that uncertainty into the world when their entire way of life was a giant question mark seemed too risky, too dangerous. 

He told Phinks once, in not so many words, that Phinks is the stable center of Feitan’s otherwise precarious way of living, that Phinks is the solid ground that keeps him steady even when everything else unravels. It’s wasn’t a lie then and it’s still not exactly a lie now, but there’s a part of him that knows that just having this isn’t enough anymore. That, despite his best efforts to become the kind of person who’s bulletproof, he’s gone and gotten himself attached to someone, and he knows, he _knows_ that this was never supposed to be the way things ended up. He knows it like he’s known it since the beginning, and yet there’s a part of him that wants something more from the world before it all comes crashing down. Maybe, he thinks, this is what it means to grow up. Maybe the novelty of stealing pretty things was always going to wear off. Feitan has never known how old he is, not exactly, not in the way everyone else takes for granted, but he knows that he’s lived long enough that it feels like it’d be a waste to just keep treading water. 

So, he leaves. He leaves with a question hanging in the air, because he knows by now what he wants, knows that he needs to do, but this has never been a one-way street, and he can tell when Phinks looks at him that there’s something he’s not letting himself see. Phinks is the type of person who’s always needed a little push to leap over the edge into the things that matter, and Feitan thinks about Phinks’ impatience in Yorknew, the misplaced anger, and he thinks _good_ , thinks _let him ruminate_. And the answer he gets may not be the answer he wants, he knows, because maybe there’s a reason they’ve never talked about any of this, but it’s the only way for him to start moving forward in his life again. Feitan will just have to use the time he has now to get used to the idea that maybe letting his heart break a little bit is a part of it, that maybe there are things in the world that, for all his strength and skill and cleverness, aren’t his to have. And maybe that’ll just have to be okay. 

Five weeks later, he gets a text. He doesn’t have the number saved and there’s no indication of who it’s from, but he knows there’s only one person in the world it could be. He smiles. Maybe this will be his salvation after all.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are v much appreciated! 
> 
> come find me on [tumblr](http://youichi-kuramochi.tumblr.com) if you feel so inclined!


End file.
